Strange as it was II

Another post with same title!! But its not part 2 of the last one, just a sequel. Another strange thing happened today. I think it was around 6 pm today (4th October 2006) when I was on the cell phone. I went to the roof in the hopes of getting better signal, and some privacy. While chatting, I noticed some kids excitedly pointing at something in the west-north-west sky. At first I thought about kites, but curiosity got the better of me and followed their gaze. There it was, about 50 degrees above horizon, a streak of something pure white. I thought it was a trick of light, coupled together by a high flying jet with unusual contrail, but a jet with so much contrail must make heck of a noise. And it was not a double parallel contrail. It was a plume. The confusing stuff was that at the head of the plume, there was something shiny, and apparenly blinking, which I thought was a strobe light of a jet. But as I said, it was silent, and the plume was rather think, without second parallel one. I had no idea what it was, but had enough sense to take a couple of shots. It was too slow to be a jet or a meteor, and too fast to be a comet. I knew then, whatever it was, it was athmospheric, at least it was inside the athmosphere. Later it came to me, it might have been some space debris. I know for a fact that Russians throw space-trash from International Space Station in their supply ship and hurl them into athmosphere where it would burn up before hitting the earth. But it was moving from east to west, and ISS has polar orbit so can't say for sure. Of course, if did not have polar orbit, it would not be seen this north. And I just did a search on ISS. ISS will pass close to Kathmandu in +2 orbit from now. It is possible that that space-junk might have passed those +2 orbit much sooner, because as it decends, its orbital time is reduced. But ISS goes from southwest to northeast not east to west.

So basically I don't know what it was. It might have been a UFO, I can't tell. Might have been another satellite that was at the end of its life. May be a rather slow meteor. Or a small asteroid that had been captured by Earth's gravity. I know about one thats been in Earth orbit for about 4 years, but it's expected to leave the orbit in next couple of years. Maybe there are other such meteors people had not yet discovered. Who knows? I know one thing for sure -- it did not have any conventional propellant. Just gravity and friction doing its work.

They say strange things happen in triplicates. I wonder whats coming up next!!!

Strange as it was

I thought it was going to be just another sunday. Boy... was I wrong!! First the day started with a Formula 1 Grand Prix -- Chinese Grand Prix, to be exact. Now this is one of the very few tracks where Michael is not very successful. As far as I remember, he spun off in the debut of the track, and performed rather poor last year. This year too, I did not expect him to perform well. And if you were to go ahead with his qualification performance, you'd say he would be lucky to finish in points. Neither Ferrari nor Bridgestone was suited for the wet condition. Michael was the only one in top ten qualifiers with Bridgestone tyres. With just 2 points seperating Alonso and Schumacher in the championship, I was certain Michael would blow up his championship aspirations here. But boy-oh-boy. The race was superb. Although it was pit-strategy that played key role, luck and changing conditions favored Michael and he won here. I wish I could give a lap-by-lap description of the race, but I can't trust my memory to describe every lap.
Anyway the race is over and now championship standings are even -- both Michael and Alonso stand at 116 points each. Ferrari lost out because of Massa's retirement, but they are just 1 point behind Renault.
That race took most of the day. Afternoon was pretty uneventful with the exception of two movies (Da Vinci Code and The Wild) and lots of SMS'es. It was the evening that was strange. I had to go to Ason for Syako-Tyako, and I left after it was dark. When I got to the gate, and was closing it, I noticed how clear the sky was, and also noticed the constellation Cassiopeia. It is one of the most easily identifiable constellation, with its distinctive W shape. Let me see if I can attach a map of that constellation

Click on the image for bigger picture. Up is North, as usual, but left is East, not West. Its optimized to be viewed lying down while looking at the sky.

So there I was, closing the gate, when I saw something unusual. Just by the constellation was a very bright object, an object brighter than the star Vega, possibly brighter than the planet Jupiter. It was just by the small star visible in the picture -- the one thats just top left of the centre star in the constellation. It was not one of the metors, or a plane, because it was not moving, but it was very bright, steller bright, I mean. I would have it as a guess, but it might have been outside the athmosphere. For the moment, I thought I was looking at a different constellation, but after about a minute, that object was no longer there. I can't say how it vanished, because I was driving then, and couldn't keep my eyes in the sky. But I am certain it was fixed. So it most probably is not satellite. But for those who'd like to confirm, the time was around 1900 hrs NST (UTC+0545).