Missing toolkit found...

[JohnH]

The tool bag lost by NASA astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper during an ISS space walk has been filmed sailing over Earth by a veteran satellite observer over the weekend.
SpaceWeather.com (http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=23&month=11&year=2008) has a video recording (http://spaceweather.com/swpod2008/23nov08/33442.wmv?PHPSESSID=a0mku047eunmiko uh7rod06rf7) of the backpack-sized bag's extended lesson in basic Newtonian physics made by Kevin Fetter from his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario.

[erick]

Gee, she gave it a good throw, didn't she! ;)



OK, mis-identification, surely! Too small to see. Got to be still near the ISS travelling at much the same velocity.

[Ric]

That's pretty amazing stuff.

[TrevorW]

No way it would be way too small to see and would stay close to the ISS exactly as suggested by Eric. Also going way to fast must have been a meteor or UFO

[erick]

Mr Fetter hasn't said "Gottcha" yet? :confuse2:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4772485a12.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/with-the-right-tools-you-can-find-anything/2008/11/25/1227491514585.html

He does seem to have got other stuff - but compare the videos of this big Ammonia thingie to that purported to be the small toolcase?

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtwdWq3BzIY

ps. I'm OK with the speed the object was moving against the background - not unlike most orbiting stuff?

[JohnH]

It does seem very unlikely doesn't it?

So I thought about it...the pack looks to be no more than 1m x 1m in size. At an altitude of 350 km the apparent size would be approx 1/350000 deg or about 0.6" unless my maths is off. This is about half the resolving power of the scope in question. If he used the 50mm lens it is less likely. No chace of resolving surface details then...It looks like the object is about mag 8 or perhaps more (should be visible in binos!!!) if that really is Beta pictoris in the frame...

I have no way to estimate absolute magnitude of the pack - but for comparison consider a sattelite that is mag 2.5 at is brightest, max visible x section 260 m2 (big as a bus) but at 780 Km (this is data from Heavans above for Envisat). If it shrank to 1m2 and moved down to 350Km it would be 4/260ths as bright or 1/85 as bright let's round it down to 1/100th of the brigthness. So it would be Mag 2.5+5 = Mag 7.5 now it does not sound so unreasonable any more....

Maybe it is real....or maybe my maths is all wrong...fun either way.

[Jen]

:eyepop: what ever it was it looked cool anyway haha;)

[kiwidoc66]

According to Heavens Above (http://www.heavens-above.com) it is visible ahead of the ISS as a mag 8.7 to 5.8 object - they provide predictions of when it passes a given location. Have any Ice-in-Spacers managed to see it?

David