Night Sky Photo Mystery

[480sparky]

A slow meteor.

But it's not in the left lane with it's blinker on.

 

[Hardus Nameous]

Spy satellite?
Mabye a baloon? What was the wind doing that night?
Mabye a small asteroid flying by earth? Have you asked NASA if anything was flying by that night?

 

[RacePhoto]

A slow meteor.

Good one.

I think a satellite of some sort, makes the most sense. A slow moving Tardis is a distant possibility. UFO? Finally I've found Nessy. Yeah, maybe NASA knows, or whoever tracks space junk and everything that's up there. ISS by the way, is much faster and I've shot that before, different path, fast East to West. Asteroid would be really nice to have captured.

I've made others since then, nothing. If it was a regular occurring geosynchronous GPS, weather or something like those, I'd expect to see it again. Well I have the date and the time and if I ever figure out who to ask, maybe I'll know. If I do, I'll try to remember to come back with the answer, because "Inquiring Minds..."

 

[Grandpa Ron]

My guess is it is a meteor streaking across the film plane. Most of the ones I have seen are fast and last 1/4 to 1/2 second.

 

[RacePhoto]

My guess is it is a meteor streaking across the film plane. Most of the ones I have seen are fast and last 1/4 to 1/2 second.

Maybe I didn't describe it well, but that's a series of shots, taken over 1 1/2 hours, combined. Star trails. But each one of the dots that made up that streak were 30 seconds apart. It's not a streak or a trail on it's own, but a star trail from something moving counter to the Earths rotation, across the paths of the rest of the sky.

It's not one streak, it is 180 individual dots that combined, made up the streak.

I suspect it's some kind of communication satellite that's not perfectly stationary, but close to geosynchronous. The GPS satellites are not always the same and in the same spot. I don't know about weathers Sats. or the ones that XM radio transmits from.

Another part of the mystery is, why don't I get this on other nights? I've never seen anything like it before or since.

 

[480sparky]

Many people don't understand orbital mechanics. Suffice it to say, a satellite can be at any distance from and at any angle in relation to the earth and it's axis of rotation. So the apparent speed and the angular difference from the star trails have vary widely.

 

[Original katomi]

Space junk reflecting sun light?

 

[480sparky]

Space junk reflecting sun light?

Photographs the same as a functioning satellite.

 

[RacePhoto]

Thanks that explains the light, it was some big and bright satellite.

 

[Original katomi]

You know it’s the little green men photographing you .. don’t you

 

[RacePhoto]

No I don't believe in that stuff, the little voices in my head, told me not to.

I'll just say the best explanation (or question?) ever, came from South Park. Advanced highly intelligent alien life forms, travel across the universe, just so they can look up our butts?

And from a more reasonable skeptical source, if they wanted to contact us, why crop circles, secret messages, or itinerant farmers in Germany? Why not just drop a business card on the White House lawn?

 

[AlanKlein]

No I don't believe in that stuff, the little voices in my head, told me not to.

I'll just say the best explanation (or question?) ever, came from South Park. Advanced highly intelligent alien life forms, travel across the universe, just so they can look up our butts?

And from a more reasonable skeptical source, if they wanted to contact us, why crop circles, secret messages, or itinerant farmers in Germany? Why not just drop a business card on the White House lawn?

Actually they're floating around the earth in balloons making believe they're Chinese.

 

[f64_or_bust]

Try taking a few frames, same exposure time, same ISO, and ideally, at the same temperature, but with your lens capped. See if they still show up. They could be hot pixels, defective pixels in the image sensor, and not anything in the sky at all. Every sensor has them, a certain number are considered "acceptable", and not a defective sensor. They show up during low light exposures, typically those with significant exposure time. Even if your individual frames don't show the star streaks, your exposures were probably a few seconds long, and that's more than enough for these things to show up.

If they're in every frame, capped or pointed at the sky, then you can just fix them in post, they aren't real.

 

[RacePhoto]

I used dark frames to cancel hot pixels. Not that they all work all the time. I actually took 40 dark frames, just in case.

As long as this is active, and I think the answer is above, they are a satellite that's moving very slowly in relation to the Earth. Some will cross the sky faster, maybe in minutes, but some of the weather sats. will be nearly geosynchronous.

Someone showed me an image he made, years ago, where the software aligned every image, so instead of streaks, it was just dots. This would be interesting, but I don't think manually doing that, frame by frame in Photoshop is the answer. Some of the macro software might handle that, but is there any FREE software or trial that I could use to see how much I like the results?

Spring is here and I'm working on a newer camera in a box and trying to find a way to make a weatherproof sky camera using a CCTV dome. It's not that often that I'd have a nice clear sky, when it's raining, but sometimes it's clear with a possibility of a front passing, that would bring rain or snow, and I'd like to be able to take the sky photos and have the camera safe, if the weather changes.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Since I prefer film, I set it and forget it for about 3hrs. The down side of course is a meteor and a slow moving satellite or just plain space junk can appear similar.

While it is true the serious satellite tracking hobbyist might have a better idea of what is up there, like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

I kind of like the sense of mystery and curiosity.