Pegasus Tail Star Event

[Charlie Brown]

I was watching star m30 late Sat. (EDT) and observed a brilliant flash of light from the star just to the right of m30. Does anyone else know about this?

[michaelmorris]

A point source flash of light could be a number of things such as a tumbling satellite or a head on meteor.  How long did the 'flash' last for?

[Charlie Brown]

The flash lasted a couple of seconds at most and REALLY seemed to be an ejection from the star.  Do you know which star I am talking about in the " tail" of Pegasus? Not sure exactly of M30 bc I keep seeing Andromeda when I search but I thought that was the reddish star I have noticed often.

[harrym]

Not sure which star you're talking about, especially as M30 is quite a long way from Pegasus - do you mean M31 perhaps? There's nothing a star can do that would produce a flash like that, so the flash must have been caused by something in front of the star - as Michael said, a meteor or a satellite is most likely.

[Charlie Brown]

I was looking " south"  of Andromeda at a star that appears reddish to me often. The star I am talking about ( naked eye) is just right of that. You're right, I don't know about star events, if something hit a star, would it absorb it? A star would not splash? Amazing coincidence if I saw a meteor or something. 

 

 

[Paul M]

I've seen a number of momentary but often bright "flashes". The probable source of the flashes are glinting satellites, head-on meteors and internal optical effects of the eyeball. The more time you spend looking at the sky the more likely you are to see infrequent and improbable events!

Most astronomical events last much longer than seconds. Even high speed stellar events. They are high energy events that gradually increases in brightness and persists for days, months and years. Think of novae and supernovae. Most certainly not momentary. Features such as stellar jets may be light years in length and have lifetimes measured in thousands or millions of years.

A very bright event on a distant star would not be a momentary flash if visible from Earth.

 

[ronin]

Almost certainly a satellite that just happened to be at that position in the sky. Whether it was an "in control" satellite or an "ouf of control" tumbling one it is difficult/impossible to say.

People talk of Iridium satellites but they are the big ones, if you check Calsky there are hundreds of other ones that are fainter but still a reasonable flash, and after that there are likely around 10,000 to 15,000 that we know nothing about.

The fact that you saw it and it disappeared again sort of rules out a star. The time scale of a stellar flare is not seconds of minutes it is days, weeks, months and years. Solar flares on the sun last hours and relative to the sun they are insignificant in terms of brightness. Certainly at several light years there is no chance of observing any change in illumination.