Oops. Thanks for the info! Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: Michael Clive <zeinin_at_gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 4, 2024 12:43:09 PM To: Tom Wagner <IowaTom_at_outlook.com> Cc: seesat-l_at_lists.seesatmail.org <seesat-l_at_lists.seesatmail.org> Subject: Re: Outgassing of the Falcon 9 second stage Falcon 9 is a lox/kerosene rocket. There is no methane in the second stage. There is liquid oxygen, kerosene, helium and possibly nitrogen. Most of the dump is helium by volume. On Tue, Jun 4, 2024, 10:17 AM Tom Wagner via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_lists.seesatmail.org<mailto:seesat-l_at_lists.seesatmail.org>> wrote: There have been several occasions when many people from the southwest to the southern Midwest US states have reported seeing a mysterious puffing small white cloud hurtling across the sky from the west to the southeast. It was obviously the “outgassing” of extra fuel from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched Group 6 Starlink satellites from Florida. The people that see this are within 600 miles of the trajectory and are in nautical to astronomical twilight about 90 minutes after a launch from Florida. From 600 miles away the rocket reaches around 10 degrees above the horizon. It stands to reason that methane and oxygen are what is released. I have read that excess fuel is discharged to prevent the second stage from exploding as it reenters the atmosphere later. As the gases leave the rocket, they seem to puff forward like a retrograde ‘burn’ but because they happen repeatedly, I do not believe the many puffs are associated with the one retrograde burn that I have read occurs about 30 minutes before the rocket reenters over the Indian Ocean. When the rocket is in sunlight during this phenomenon, the clouds are bright and appear white. I assume that liquid oxygen vaporizes into O2 gas, which would be invisible. Methane (CH4), on the other hand, might form a cloud of CH4 droplets, which would appear white until they evaporate. In some of the sightings of this phenomenon, as with the pass of Starlink G6-64 over the SW US on May 31, 2024 at about 10:07 pm MDT, shortly AFTER the rocket crossed into the earth's shadow, a large white rapidly expanding cloud, bigger than the other events, suddenly appeared. That one gradually turned red as it faded away. Brian Jordan recorded a video of the event. With his permission, I am including the last part of it here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PamSy3V5kda4ChqEunJCn3VZ3-6ydJVr/view?usp=sharing I am wondering if the methane released at that time reached the last vestige of sunlight in the penumbra, causing the white cloud to reappear. I can't imagine either CH4 or O2 it would be actually emitting a white color. If the invisible O2 that was released at that moment was excited – by some means - it should emit the characteristic 630nm red color of aurora that occurs at altitudes greater than 200km. According to the pre-launch TLE from CelesTrak, which I used in Heavensat, the rocket body was around 283km up when it started across the US. If that was an actual burn, one or both of the products CO2 and H2O was responsible for the red glow. I doubt that was the case. I strongly suspect that the red light is emitted with every puff but was washed out by the scattering of white sunlight from the methane droplets. Once the rocket went into shadow then the red, which produced its own light, would itself become visible. I monitor the Starlink launches and whenever I see that the second stage is going to be visible in twilight near the end of its first orbit over any part of the US, I post an alert to my STARLINK SATELLITE OBSERVING GROUP on Facebook so a lot of people can know its on its way. Here is the source of the information about excited oxygen emitting red light. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:11_Oxygen_Spectrum_%282844510582%29.jpg Clear skies, Tom Iowa USA _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list https://lists.seesatmail.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list https://lists.seesatmail.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Tue Jun 04 2024 - 10:45:43 UTC
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