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Is this a meteor?

Astrosurf

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Ewan

Ewan

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Hi Astroturf, i posted a similar shot a week or so ago & this looks similar, i'd be inclined to say satelite now i have caught quite a few now, it looks to be very long, from one edge to the other, it peaks in the centre, i'd imagine optimal viewing from where you are the n fades as the sun's rays are not reflecting that well as it moves away, i think but i may be wrong so someone with more expierience may shoot me down :-), very nice capture all the same though.

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JamesF

JamesF

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I'm still not certain.

What led me to wonder about Ewan's image was that the gap in the trail that resulted from the shutter being closed between shots didn't seem big enough for the speed that even the slower meteors tend to be travelling at.

In this shot we can't tell much about speed unfortunately because it's a single frame and there's no way to work out how long the trail took to make. My guess is however that the entire image frame is probably only four degrees wide, so the trail is perhaps three at most and whilst it enters and leaves the frame, it brightens and dims within those three degrees of arc. My experince of satellite trails is that they last longer than that, whilst I have seen some very short meteor trails. It's a tough one to call. I'm not certain either way. I guess the only way to be sure would be to check if there were any satellites in that area at the time the shot was taken.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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I'm working on the basis that the North American Nebula is about two degrees wide, so I'd estimate the full frame width in that shot to be about five degrees, or about the width of your index, middle and ring fingers held out at arm's length. Because it enters and leaves the frame, but has brightened and dimmed in the width of the frame, I'd have a guess at the entire trail being about the same length. The satellites I've seen directly or through the eyepiece tend to be visible longer than that. On the other hand, the brightening and dimming seems very even. I struggle to decide one way or the other.

James

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fwm891

fwm891

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I'd say satellite. If you look at the bottom of the image it begins to brighten again. Probably a fast spinning sat that has a reflecting surface catching the sun each rotation but that you weren't in the direct path of the main reflection so there was no 'flash' or brighter peak

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Ooops, minority opinion time! (with James.) I think it's a meteor. It brightens and fades. Satellites tend to track at equal brightness across an image ( damn them!) unless they happen to pass into the earth's shadow and fade for that reason. However, such fading covers more sky than we are seeing here.

Tell me about satellites: the Witch Head Nebula cops the lot and I had them in every single sub over about 20 hours of capture. They make parallel lines from top to bottom.

Not my field, I've no particular competence in this area, but I'd say meteor.

Olly

Edit, see this for an example of what I think James and I are saying. A satellite would not look like this.

http://stargazerslou...perseid-meteor/

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Stu

Stu

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They do vary in brightness very much depending on where you are relative to the flare path.

Couple of images attached for comparison, could be a dimmer viewing of one of these?

5c06c193-71e5-56de.jpg

5c06c193-7219-f4c8.jpg

Stu

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FilmGuy

FilmGuy

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This area of Cygnus is like a motorway for satellites. From my dark site OB near London, Ontario I see them very often. Imaging with film and typical 60 to 90 plus minute exposures can get the same one going through the fov on occasion. Yous looks exactly like the ones in my frames. There are so many up there that it's becoming rare to get a good exposure without a satellite trailing through.

On the other hand, doing star trails will find many geo-sats in most any area of the sky. I have one wide field frame with my 400 lens (200 in 35mm terms) with 3 of them. Streaks everywhere with tiny colourful "stars" in between. You can see that here. http://www.pbase.com/pentax67/image/126715042

If the image looks small, scroll down below the text to select Original. Click on the image and you will get thumbnails of other posted images.

igor

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