M42 & an intruder

[Blackbrazen]

I shot 2 frames of M42 last Thursday evening just for the fun of it, and when I looked at them on the computer afterwards, it turned out that I had an intruder!

What does everyone think, is it a satellite or a Geminid meteor?

This is the result of the two frames stacked in DSS with default settings and a bit of curves and sharpening in PS. Both frames were 30secs at 800 ISO through a Borg 76mm refractor. (I resized it for attaching to the post)

Thanks for looking!

[nightfisher]

good shot for a 2 frame image, my guess would be a satellite

[Laowei Tony]

That's the wonder of astronomy, you always wonder what you'll see.

Nice pic all the same. :-)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I would say satellite. Meteors tend to show tapered trails.

[VigdisVZ]

Satellite. Get these quite often.

Still a nice pic, I like it! Very good for 2 subs.

[rizzi]

Amazing shot! no matter how many pictures you see of the M42, pro or amateur, it just never fails to take one's breath away.

Thank you for sharing the picture.

How did you stack the images, which you get from stacking several videos, into one?

[Raga]

Lovely shot.

[Blackbrazen]

Yes, Looking at it again, it's clearly very uniform along its length and not tapered in any way. Nevermind, I'm quite pleased with it, and looking forward to what I can get from more frames and a variety of exposures. I also need to take darks and bias frames too.

Rizzi, I just bunged the two frames that I took into DSS, checked them and hit Go. Then I took the resulting tiff file and worked on curves, sharpness and saturation in Photoshop.