![\"Bernard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/285e24dcd32b4cc78773595c7348099d.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nThe end of daylight time is coinciding with some interesting sights in the dark evening skies this week.<\/p>\n
A number of New Brunswickers said they witnessed a swirl-shaped cloud in the western sky at about 7 p.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Cellphone quality photos were posted from Riverview, Queens County and the northwestern part of the province.<\/p>\n
C.J. Bernard, an amateur astrophotographer in the Tobique area, happened to be out taking pictures Tuesday night of the \u201cfire-in-the-sky\u201d sunset over the St. John River, or Wolastoq, and of the full moon rising.<\/p>\n
After he posted some of his shots on Facebook, he noticed the hubbub online over the swirl, turned around and sure enough he could see it right behind him.<\/p>\n
According to the European Space Agency, a rocket was launched from its spaceport in French Guiana at 7:02 p.m. AT, carrying a satellite for the Sentinel-1 mission, which provides radar vision for the Copernicus Earth observation program.<\/p>\n
The satellite was placed in orbit 34 minutes later, the agency said in a release posted on its website.<\/p>\n
Bernard wrote a little blurb about the rocket launch and shared some of his own photos, which have since been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.<\/p>\n
He chalks it up to being in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n
It used to be that rocket launches only happened in the middle of the day, said Bernard, but now they\u2019re taking place around the clock, and in this case, during what photographers refer to as golden hour.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Submitted by C.J. Bernard)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the booster came off, the way the sun was setting, that light was still up there, and it refracted.\u201d<\/p>\n
What New Brunswickers saw was like a reflection from a bent mirror, he explained.<\/p>\n
Nancy Colpitts also got a picture of the rocket and posted it in a community group for Wicklow, about 45 kilometres north of Woodstock.<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently, the light patterns are fuels burning off as it spirals in orbit,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
The swirl was visible as it moved northerly across the sky, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe spiral moved in and out of sight as it went though the clouds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several other group members replied that they\u2019d also seen it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got your conspiracy theorists going like, ‘Oh, let’s UFO.’ It’s this, it’s that,” she said. \u201cIt wasn’t Independence Day. I don’t think it was Will Smith coming down with E.T.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernard has been following weather and astronomy since the ice storm of 1998 in Ottawa. He loves the northern lights and \u201canything in the sky\u201d and likes to share information about what he sees.<\/p>\n
He often shares on the Facebook page, New Brunswick Storm and Weather Centre.<\/p>\n
Tuesday was an exceptional night, he said, with a full moon, a fiery sunset and a rocket in the sky.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty more to see this month, according to Chris Curwin of Astronomy by the Bay.<\/p>\n
Members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Saint John Astronomy Club are inviting the public to Irving Nature Park on Saturday to skygaze through telescopes and binoculars. Rain dates are Sunday or Monday, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re probably the only group that looks forward to the time change,\u201d Curwin said.<\/p>\n
Curwin said these are some of the sights to behold:<\/p>\n
Saturn’s \u201cbeautiful\u201d ring system, which is visible through a telescope.<\/p>\n
Jupiter and its four moons, which can be seen even through binoculars.<\/p>\n
A double cluster of stars in the constellation Perseus.<\/p>\n
The constellation Orion, which is now rising earlier in the evening.<\/p>\n
The Orion Nebula, a \u201cstellar nursery,\u201d just below the three stars that make up Orion\u2019s belt.<\/p>\n
The Pleiades star cluster<\/p>\n
The Geminid meteor shower, which comes up between Nov. 19 and Dec. 24, peaking on Dec. 13.<\/p>\n
Aurora sightings, which will be visible Thursday into Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. forecasts.<\/p>\n
One thing that a lot of stargazers have been buzzing about since July, the comet 3I\/ATAS, is not visible unless you have a telescope of at least 10 inches, said Curwin.<\/p>\n
Even through a telescope, it will appear very faint and smudge-like, he said.<\/p>\n
The 3I stands for this comet being the third interstellar object that humans have known about. Interstellar means it originated outside our solar system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere may have been many more, but it’s the third one that we discovered,\u201d said Curwin.<\/p>\n
The first two were 1I\/Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I\/Borisovso\u00a0 in 2019.<\/p>\n
ATLAS is the relatively new survey system by which the comet was spotted.<\/p>\n
\u201cATLAS is a global network of four different robotic telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa, and they’re designed to provide us an early warning of potential asteroid impacts coming to Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt scans the entire night sky multiple times each night \u2026 tracking near-Earth objects and providing us an advance warning in case something’s heading in our direction,\u201d said Curwin.<\/p>\n
Curwin said 3I\/ATLAS is unusual for several reasons.\u00a0For one thing, it’s not bound to the sun by its gravity.<\/p>\n
For another, it\u2019s speed of about 60 kilometres a second is high for a comet.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s giving off an unusually high amount of carbon dioxide, relative to water, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be as old as our solar system, actually billions of years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curwin said 3I\/ATLAS is also providing fodder for conspiracy theorists, and the government shutdown in the United States is not helping matters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s affecting NASA, which as a result is not releasing much information.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want more facts. And if they can’t get those facts and, you know, it’s off into, well, what is it really? And what are they not telling us?\u201d<\/p>\n
But Curwin said he hasn\u2019t seen anything to suggest it\u2019s anything other than a comet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The end of daylight time is coinciding with some interesting sights in the dark evening skies this week.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[84750,17614,4636,111,139,69,31482,13663,147,392],"class_list":["post-120304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-chris-curwin","tag-european-space-agency","tag-facebook","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rocket-launch","tag-rocket-launches","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}