The red arrow indicates WT1190F in this image taken by the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope. (Credit: B. Bolin, R. Jedicke, M. Micheli)
Posted on 11/13/2015 7:19:42 AM PST by yoe
Was it a spent Apollo rocket stage from the ’60s? A scary space rock? Whatever it was, the mysterious object known as WT1190F zoomed in from deep space and went out in a largely unseen blaze of glory today. WT1190F
The red arrow indicates WT1190F in this image taken by the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope. (Credit: B. Bolin, R. Jedicke, M. Micheli)
Experts on orbital debris said WT1190F was probably a low-density object measuring just 6 feet (2 meters) long. Astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey first observed the object in October. When they looked back at archived telescope data, they figured out that it had been tracing a highly eccentric orbit around Earth that swung out beyond the moon’s orbit.
[snip] Other observers suggested it could be debris cast off by a moon mission, perhaps going back to the Apollo era. No wonder the thing was nicknamed “WTF.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at geekwire.com ...
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RAMA RETURNS!.................
As some ancient astronaut theorists believe.
Don’t know what it is but just in case, fire up the boilers on BB63(missouri) just in case.
RAMA RETURNS!................. and says ‘howdy’.
I was really inferring to the Arthur C. Clarke Sci-Fi novel series about an alien spaceship, the Earth people of the 22nd century dubbed ‘Rama’.........................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama
“the mysterious object known as WT1190F zoomed in from deep space”
Deep space? If it was “deep space” it wouldn’t have been anything from the Apollo missions.
WTF!?!?!?!?!?!
I know. I got the reference. It’s the story he used to predict the artificial satellite. The pic had the pale dude waving ‘howdy’ is all.
Rendezvous with Rama was written in 1973...........well after the Sputnik.............
Arthur C. Clarke was the first person, presumably, to reason quite reasonably that if orbital speed granted a ninety-minute trip around the Earth, and the Moon takes a month to do the same thing, that there is a sweet location somewhere between the two orbital speeds where an object in orbit will take precisely twenty-four hours to orbit the Earth, by which time the Earth will have rotated once.
This gives the illusion that the object is stationary with respect to Earth, and “satellite” dishes pointed toward such an object need only be accurately pointed one time. We now call such orbits geo-stationary or synchronous.
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