Definitely has the look and habit of natrolite! Awesome find. I love crystals that radiate like that.
My summer of rockhounding continues, this time to the eastern side of Washington, in search of my birthstone: garnet.
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Definitely has the look and habit of natrolite! Awesome find. I love crystals that radiate like that.
all I can say is thank goodness for Snowden!Last night I was able to capture some images of Mentor-2, an american classified geosynchronous satellite used for illegal espionage on European citizens. I've been trying to catch it for a month now and I finally got it. We know about the existence of the satellite because of a group of amateur satellite trackers and we know about the classified operations it performs thanks to the Edward Snowden leaked documents from the NSA. I reccomend you to read this excellent article if you are interested on this topic which also shows the Mentor-4, which is currently evesdropping on a communications satellite as close as a few tens of kilometers. Mentor-4 substituted Mentor-2 in its evesdropping operations on Thuraya-2 a few years ago.
[youtube]8X3DS5TyYCE[/youtube]
I took 187 images of 8 second exposures (thanks to OpenCamera which allows for this on my phone), then in Photoshop I applied Contrast, Brightness and Saturation filters so the object could be clearly visible. Combine everything in a video editor and voilá, 2 hours compressed in 9 seconds.
I've done it with a pair of 20x80 binoculars and my phone camera attached to it. This was taken from my nieghbourhood in Madrid, so as an european capital city the night sky was full of smog and light pollution. Also the Moon was shining brightly and close to the field of view and there was a lot of dust suspended in the air, so the observation was made with sub-optimal conditions for sure. Next time I will move to a darker zone, on a moonless night with good seeing and try to do this again.
I'm amazed that with a pair of binoculars and a phone camera one can spot an artificial object at 37.000 km from our planet. This is probably the most distant man-made object I've ever seen with my own eyes. The fact that its dish antenna is believed to be more than 100 m in diameter (which would be the largest satellite in orbit) probably helps to spot the thing. Spying on spies, that's my hobby now.
early perseids?Nice video catch last night, heading almost straight towards my house! Meteorites very likely. Low entry speed at near 11 km/s. I suspect it has visited Earth before and been captured. Pre entry orbit below (preliminary results).
[youtube]zE4fHPslON4[/youtube]
orbit.jpg
Not a Perseid, way too slow. Besides, it wouldn't really be early. The Perseids can be seen for mid-July, but they peak around 12th August.