What is this trail

[Guest]

I took this last night as I was fooling around trying to take a picture of M81. Suddenly one of the exposures showed this trail. I assume it is either a satellite or a plane. The original was rather dark so I stretched it a bit. In the original the trail showed regular pulses which don't show up so well in the stretched version. The exposure was 30 seconds.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Guest

[Cornelius Varley]

It's a satellite. A lot of them around apparently. If it had been an aircraft there would have been three parallel trails close together, the outer trails would probably be slightly fainter with regular pulses. 

[Guest]

Quote

 

Thanks Peter, I've always assumed that if see a light moving steadily across the sky at night then it must be a satellite. I often see planes but usually you can see more than one light and usually a red light. But last night almost anytime I looked up I could see somewhere in the sky what appeared to be a satellite. So then I thought that perhaps they were high flying aircraft. The last two nights when I've been taking pictures I've taken one with a trail.

[Louis D]

5 hours ago, woodblock said:

Thanks Peter, I've always assumed that if see a light moving steadily across the sky at night then it must be a satellite. I often see planes but usually you can see more than one light and usually a red light. But last night almost anytime I looked up I could see somewhere in the sky what appeared to be a satellite. So then I thought that perhaps they were high flying aircraft. The last two nights when I've been taking pictures I've taken one with a trail.

There have been a lot of new satellites recently put up by competing concerns trying to bring internet access to the entire world.  Also, there's a lot fewer planes flying right now, so that probability has significantly dropped.