Altair & Shooting Star

[Scooot]

I was taking some test exposures the other evening and caught this shooting star in one. As I’ve just finished watching The Sky at Night, about asteroids, meteors etc I thought I’d post it. This is a single 1 minute at f2.8 ISO400 on the star adventurer with 135mm.

[MarsG76]

Cool stuff.. what a coincidence.. catch a shooting star during a shooting star SaN episode.... 

[Demonperformer]

Great result ... wonder if it was an early Draconid, associated with 21P/Giacobini-Zinner [https://www.space.com/41758-bright-green-comet-21p-of-september-2018.html].

[Scooot]

Thanks @MarsG76 and Dp. @Demonperformer I can’t open your link but It was that comet I’d intended to try and image but it was too cloudy. I’ll imagine the meteor was part of it as compensation  

[Stu]

Very nice image Richard, although I’m not totally convinced it is a meteor. Does the line not look too even, indicating a satellite? There are plenty around that area it think.

I don’t want to take away from a great image, and may well be wrong!!

[Scooot]

41 minutes ago, Stu said:

Very nice image Richard, although I’m not totally convinced it is a meteor. Does the line not look too even, indicating a satellite? There are plenty around that area it think.

I don’t want to take away from a great image, and may well be wrong!!

Could be. Wouldn’t a satellite stretch across the whole image?

edit

not sure this is conclusive but the streak has vanished quite quickly.

http://dakotalapse.com/2014/03/meteor-or-satellite/

[Stu]

I guess it just cuts in and out cleanly as if it were the shutter cutting off, not fading in and out.

When was it taken?

[Scooot]

3 hours ago, Stu said:

I guess it just cuts in and out cleanly as if it were the shutter cutting off, not fading in and out.

When was it taken?

Hi Stu, I took it on 7/9/18 at 22.16

This is a jpeg of it as it came out of the camera (apart from increasing the brightness by 2 stops so you can see it).

I used Pixinsight to process the finished image and created a mask (range mask - star mask)  to highlight the meteor to increase it's brightness so it stood out more. I had to use a clone stamp to erase some brightness nearby carefully avoiding the meteor so I'm surprised its as straight as it is.  

[tooth_dr]

5 hours ago, Scooot said:

Could be. Wouldn’t a satellite stretch across the whole image?

 

If you have a sub immediately prior or after the one posted above, then that would confirm either a satellite or meteor

[Scooot]

44 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

 

If you have a sub immediately prior or after the one posted above, then that would confirm either a satellite or meteor

I have a 40 sec sub taken just before at 22.14 , its not in that, see below.  The next one I tried which was 75 sec wasn't until 22.34. I had to stop to let a big bank of cloud pass over.

[Stu]

Well nothing else shows up around then, so it does appear to be a meteor. Apologies for questioning, I just like to understand things myself and if something doesn’t look right, I ask

Nice one  

[Scooot]

14 minutes ago, Stu said:

Well nothing else shows up around then, so it does appear to be a meteor. Apologies for questioning, I just like to understand things myself and if something doesn’t look right, I ask

Nice one  

No probs Stu, a satellite was the first thing I thought of, I don’t care either way, it was only a lucky catch. I presumed it was a meteor at first  because it was such a short streak with no lights and it looked like one (to me that is)  I have learnt a bit more about how to tell now though ??