Newb report: Mars, Jupiter, Beehive, and a bright flash

[1crash70]

Aside from the frigid temperature, last night was amazing.

I'm still quite new so most of my clear evenings are spent gawking at Jupiter & the Great Orion Nebula.

The temp was low-mid 20's (F), with some wind...but the skies were so clear before the moonrise I ended up going in-n-out for nearly 4 hours...till numbness in my fingers finally convinced me to pack it in, barely an hour before Saturn cleared the tree line. Bummer! Saturn was The goal; I just couldn't stay inside to wait on it. I had a few new toys to play with and hadn't seen such a dark sky since getting my scope, (10" Dob).

*NEW TOYS included:

Explore Scientific 18mm EP

Baader UHC filter

And a Hyperion Mark III zoom EP

-Jupiter and its moons were (as usual) awe-inspiring.

-I could see what I'm pretty sure was Cr69 open cluster (in Orion) with the naked eye, so that was the next target.

-Mars rose a few hours after dusk; though trees limited my visibility I managed to view it for a few minutes with the 18* ES.

-pretty sure I found the Beehive Cluster and NGC 1647 afterwards, (though I was distracted from my SkySafari confirmation by the strangest thing...

-questionable bright (starlike) flash at roughly 10:35-10:40 pm.

I don't know enough to give a precise location...but it was beneath and west of orion's belt, perhaps in/around the constellation Eridanus. I saw (naked eye) what looked like a star (at least as bright as Rigel) flash for maybe half a second and vanish. My first thought was that there was a tree branch partially obstructing the view of a star...which is quite normal out here in the woods, and I was not looking directly at the spot when I saw it, but at Orion...so I tried moving around to see it again. Strangely, there were no treetops blocking the view at all...there simply was not a star in that area nearly as bright as what I'd seen. There was no burst or tail nor any sign of a satellite (I thought, "perhaps I just saw an extremely bright but momentary reflection"), etc, And I'll just chalk it up to beginner's error and getting lost in the sky...but I wanted to mention it just in case anyone else spotted something similar.

Q: And, look, I know this is probably a stupid question, but one of the far-fetched thoughts I had was maybe I had caught a star going nova. Silly, I know...and damn unlikely, but since then I've been wondering "well, what WOULD it actually look like to see such a thing, with the naked eye, at different distances from us. If far enough away, is it possible that the initial explosion could appear as not much diff than a regular star in the sky, and for how long...? Moments or weeks, etc?

[m_j_lyons]

Nights like this are great...a new 10" dob is a great new toy. Have you checked the bright flash against the Iridium flare visibility database on Heavens Above? Sort of sounds like that might be the culprit. Most supernovas are very faint...and if it was "local" it would be quite the news story...and unlikely to be a sort lived event.

Happy hunting

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[1crash70]

Cool!

I will check out the Iridium flare visibility database you mentioned.

Never heard of it.

Thanks for the feedback.

[m_j_lyons]

http://www.heavens-above.com/?Loc=Roseville&Lat=38.752&Lng=-121.287&Alt=42&TZ=PST

That's the link I use...it's localized to my location...but you can change that on the front page.

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[Redpaul]

Sounds like an Iridium Flare to me. You mentioned SkySafari so would that mean you have an iPhone? There's an app for forecasting Iridium Flares, its called erm....Iridium Flares

Paul