What on earth is this?

[JamesF]

A rejected 45-second blue sub from last night. I've done nothing with this other than stretch it hard and rescale it to a reasonable size.

Now there's an aeroplane and perhaps a satellite trail there, but what is the bright spot above M13? It's not in any other subs at all and I can't think what it might be. If it's a reflection from a satellite it must have been very fast and bright not to show any significant motion.

James

[Earl]

Its not on earth I can assure you

[JB80]

Could it be a geostationary satellite?

[nameunknown]

Nuclear war on Eta Herculi ? (seems a bit too south).

P

[Kai]

Cosmic ray strike ?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Really not sure... but if you go to this site, enter the time, look up your location, find the flight number and contact the airline... you could ask the pilot if they saw anything.

Wonder if anyone else was imaging M13 at the time?

[DaveGarland]

A meteor hitting vertically?

[Ibbo!]

depends on height but could it be a single flash of a nav light

[JamesF]

Could it be a geostationary satellite?

Sounds plausible, if it were spinning and caught the Sun, but I'd expect it to have turned up on other subs? I captured 135 subs of forty-five seconds and this is the only one it appears on.

James

[Psychobilly]

I'd go with a strobe flash from a plane ... some times they are bright enought to illuminate the engine nacelles .

[JamesF]

depends on height but could it be a single flash of a nav light

I'd expect to have caught some other trail as well if it were that?

James

[Psychobilly]

Here's a link to a old thread where I caught a nacelle shot it's post #10 in it...

Sent from my GT-P7300 using Tapatalk 4

[Stargazer33]

Hi James, I was out that night too and saw a couple of these. Both times they flashed about three or four times. First was like a camera flash going off, very bright. The next one was slightly dimmer and the third one seemed to flash red. It definately wasn't an aircraft as it was too high and the flash changed colour and there were only three or four. I did wonder if it was a meteor bouncing off of the atmosphere as I saw a lovely emerald green meteor flash earlier in the night travelling East to West through Ophiucus just north of Sabik.

[JamesF]

Aliens, then. Has to be

James

[Zakalwe]

I'd expect to have caught some other trail as well if it were that?

James

You have. There's three parallel trails. Most likely is a navigation strobe

[JamesF]

Ahhh, yes, I understand now. I was clearly being dim yesterday It's all these late nights. Looks like it might rain tonight though, so I should at least catch up on some sleep.

James

[Knight of Clear Skies]

You have. There's three parallel trails. Most likely is a navigation strobe

That's an important clue we missed, that the trails are parallel. Mystery solved I think.

The site I linked to in my post above might be able to tell you what plane it was and how high it was flying.

[JamesF]

That's an important clue we missed, that the trails are parallel. Mystery solved I think.

Agreed. As soon as I read the word "parallel" it dropped into place. It's so obvious I can't see how I didn't realise at the time.

James