[meteorite-list] OT: Concorde contrail from Wales making the rounds AGAIN

[MexicoDoug]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article147272.ece

I remember this scandal; you got to have a good laugh when the British 
tabloid, The Sun, pokes fun at NASA for screwing up by sticking it up 
as the Astronomy picture of the day and calling it an awesome fireball 
(which was not claimed by Jonathan Burnett who was skateboarding and 
pulled out his camera to snap a few shots and emailed them to NASA - 
super reflexes!):

"NASA boffins who hailed a British lad’s photo as a dramatic snap of an 
exploding meteor were exposed as duffers last night."

Classic!

With the Concorde, the whole thing was further made interesting in that 
Stradling continued to explain that the Concorde fired up it main 
engines right about at that point to achieve supersonic flight in the 
typical flight plan, so it is possible that the latger "head" observed 
in the Sunlight just happened to form with perfect lighting from that 
perspective to enhance the fiery look of the photo.

Rob was tipped of by an aircraft enthusiast, Mike Stradling who 
immediately explained in The Sun that it was the Concorde which 
regularly flew over there and gave that appearance.  Steve Salter also 
got press at the time supporting the same theory.  Rob checked the 
airline timetable and posted there was a flight right then!

Marco, before all this was immediately skeptical of NASA's theory:

  "a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet 
Earth and disintegrated...one of the more spectacular meteor images yet 
recorded."

Marco explained its appearance as contrails:

"It is a bit worrying that apparently, within the team responsible for 
the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, nobody seems to have taken the 
care to contact an expert meteor astronomer first before declaring this 
publicly a certified 'daylight fireball' on their website," Langroek 
said. "NASA did not live up to its reputation" as "the major 
representative" for professional astronomers worldwide, he said."

Kindest wishes
Doug









-----Original Message-----
From: Matson, Robert D. <ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com>
To: Meteorite List <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Fri, Sep 9, 2011 4:50 pm
Subject: [meteorite-list] OT: Concorde contrail from Wales making the 
rounds AGAIN


Marco is correct. If you check the archives from umpteen years ago, you
will
see that I not only posted that it was a Concorde flight out of
Heathrow,
I believe I indicated the flight number and departure time.  --Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Marco
Langbroek
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 8:07 AM
To: Meteorite List
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite, satellite or...? 9/1/11, ,
around 9.30 pm, Mykolaiv district, Odessa - Ukraine

Jay Tate wrote:

> The photograph was taken by a Welsh schoolboy in South Wales in
October
> 2003.  It was claimed to be a meteor, but turned out to be a
> sun-illuminated aircraft contrail.

More precisely, the contrail of one of the last Concorde flights.

- Marco

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