Strange Satellite Trail?

[Jonesdee]

While discarding poor subs last night, I came across this -  plenty of trails from Mr Musk's toys, but what is the  wandering object on the right?

Anyone seen anything like this before?

 

Dave

Edited November 2, 2021 by Jonesdee
don't now my left from my right !

[JamesF]

Some sort of aircraft?  Given that it is a bit wobbly, perhaps a small aeroplane or helicopter?

James

[Jonesdee]

I wondered that too James, but these usually show multiple trails from the various lights on board.

Possibly something flying very high?

[Tiny Clanger]

It's Diwali on the 4th Nov. this year, and bonfire night on the 5th, I've seen the odd early / random rocket being let off round here, could a dying ember of a spent one falling cause a trail like that I wonder ?

[Carbon Brush]

My vote is with @Tiny Clanger.
Any pilot (fixed wing or rotary) flying like that would have to have been on the bottle🤣

[Jonesdee]

Yes, good thought @Tiny Clanger. It was a 3 minute exposure and a rocket could have passed over at relatively low level and registered on the sensor.

Much more interesting than the Space-X stuff !

[tomato]

It is an intriguing trail on your image. One November I had some aerial firework bursts that were so powerful the detonations were detectable on my PHD guide graph.

[Enigma_RL]

Aliens!

[ItsmeMaw]

1 hour ago, Enigma_RL said:

Aliens!

On Romulan ale!

[Jonesdee]

Not sure if surveillance satellites can alter course, but if that were the  cause, it must be pretty manoeuvrable!

I think I agree with Enigma_RL - must be aliens 

 

[JamesF]

1 minute ago, Jonesdee said:

must be aliens 

I reckon you're right.  They're all over the place at the moment.  We've had Martians parked in the orchard for the last month and the Jovians have only just left the guest room.  We won't be having them back.  They made a terrible mess.

James

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Could a Chinese lantern be a possibility?

[neil phillips]

This thread will just go around in circles. Not enough data to even begin to know what it is. Could be anything, including fireworks, or chinese lantern or any other number of other possibilities. The trail looks very similar to a satellite track. But that could also be just a coincidence. I can see why its intriguing. But not enough data to nail it down better than to say could be anything ?

Edited November 12, 2021 by neil phillips

[JamesF]

1 hour ago, neil phillips said:

This thread will just go round in circles.

Crop circles?

James

[neil phillips]

29 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Crop circles?

James

There's definately some planks around 🤣 

Edited November 12, 2021 by neil phillips

[vlaiv]

I think that there is enough data in that single sub to put some serious constraints on the object.

We have total sub duration. We can measure light intensity. If we know time of the sub and location - we can determine possible altitude range if object was in atmosphere. We can also limit distance under same assumption. We can then calculate G forces involved depending on possible speed of object and curvature of trajectory. Given the size of the trail - we can assume that object was unresolved - hence we can get size / distance relationship.

There is a lot of fun "detective" work to be done here.

[neil phillips]

42 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I think that there is enough data in that single sub to put some serious constraints on the object.

We have total sub duration. We can measure light intensity. If we know time of the sub and location - we can determine possible altitude range if object was in atmosphere. We can also limit distance under same assumption. We can then calculate G forces involved depending on possible speed of object and curvature of trajectory. Given the size of the trail - we can assume that object was unresolved - hence we can get size / distance relationship.

There is a lot of fun "detective" work to be done here.

Good luck with being certain on any guesswork done on this. As you can see the guesses coming fast and furious from people, already are clearly wild stabbing in the dark.

You must be way above those of the likes of tiny clanger or Knights of clear skies if you can prove rather than assume what this is ?

Give it your best shot and see what you can prove. See if you can prove what it is. Proving what its not, will not prove what it is. It might help narrow it down. But it wont prove what it is. Can see a lot of assumptions coming now. Any one of which could be right or wrong. Going around in circles as i said.

Anyway i know you know your stuff. So will stay open minded. But pretty sure your assumptions wont be solid enough to be 100% Certain. Now i am interested. And will watch these assumptions and see how convincing they are. And if  with every assumption. There wont be other possible assumptions 

Edited November 12, 2021 by neil phillips

[vlaiv]

6 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Good luck with being certain on any guesswork done on this. As you can see the guesses coming fast and furious from people, already are clearly wild stabbing in the dark.

You must be way above those of the likes of tjny clanger or Knights of clear skies if you can prove rather than assume what this is ?

Give it your best shot and see what you can prove. See if you can prove what it is. Proving what its not, will not prove what it is. It might help narrow it down. But it wont prove what it is. Can see a lot of assumptions coming now. Any one of which could be right or wrong. Going round in circles as i said.

Anyway i know you know your stuff. So will stay open minded. But pretty sure your assumptions wont be solid enough to be 100% Certain. Now i am interested. And will watch these assumptions and see how convincing they are. And if  with every assumption. There wont be other possible assumptions 

Never claimed that we can be certain about it - just wanted to point out that fun things can be done with analysis of this image.

Let's take Chinese lantern as example.

I highly doubt that it was the cause of said trail. It needs to be far enough so that it is not resolved as object. Here we need some info on equipment used - like pixel size and focal length - or we can just assume some sampling rate for argument's sake.

Let's say that image is at 2"/px. Bright part of Chinese lantern must be smaller than 2". If we examine common image of the suspect - we can safely say that light emitting part is about 10cm in size?

At what distance do we need to place 10cm so that it subtends less than 2" of arc? Answer is 10.3 kilometers away.

Now that we have rough distance - we can measure length of trail in arc seconds and convert that to actual physical trajectory and ask, can Chinese lantern traveling at "normal" speeds (moderate wind speed for example or just regular Chinese lantern ascension speed) - move that much in 3 minute exposure? Next thing that we can ask would be - given time and place of recording - we can get direction of M31 and hence see if it is actually possible for Chinese lantern to burn at that place. Say for example that we determine that M31 was near zenith. Can Chinese lantern flame burn 10K up in the atmosphere given temperature and air pressure (oxygen availability)?

How about brightness? We can calibrate recording against any of the stars in the image and calculate how many photons would a candle produce (we can estimate brightness of lantern in candles) at given distance and compare to what we measure to be photon count on segment of the trajectory.

This was all I was proposing.

In the end - we will just utilize good old scientific method - we form a hypothesis and test it against data. Hypothesis that best matches the data will be most likely explanation for what was captured in the image. Fun part is coming up with ways for that simple image to produce useful data.

 

 

[Paul M]

Come on guys! It's obviously a scratch in the photographic emulsion or possibly the glass plate was dropped between the developer and bleach/fix trays...

[neil phillips]

Even this variable has uncertainty

we can safely say that light emitting part is about 10cm in size? 

 is about ? or is ?

which is it ?  Uncertainty already ?  Wonder if we can get different size lanterns ?  the angle of the lantern. Could change the perceptible  size assumption. Sorry too many assumptions and variables already. And youve only just started. This is going to take forever. And their still will be uncertainty at the end of it. Its a pointless pursuit. with so many variables and variable assumptions. Not sure i have the patience.  But if you prove what it is. Rather than going around in circles like i originally suggested. Then i would be pretty surprised. 

Edited November 12, 2021 by neil phillips

[Jonesdee]

Hi Vlad

As you say, a fun exercise.  some more info - it was shot with an FSQ85 plus  Field Corrector (455mm) using ASI2600:

Dave

[neil phillips]

Will check back one day and see if my original comment hasnt been shown to be correct. 

This thread will just go around in circles. Not enough data to even begin to know what it is.

 Can see why it is intriguing. Sometimes the data can not be definitive enough to be certain i am afraid. This appears to be one of those cases. Though i could be wrong. If anyone could figure it out definitively its you Vlaiv. Good luck.

[neil phillips]

Will leave you with this different size and shape of lanterns. Viewed from a multitude of possible distances and angles from the lens

different size chinese lanterns - Bing images

[Craney]

Is it evidence of DARK MATTER  surrounding the Andromeda galaxy  ??

 

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, Craney said:

Is it evidence of DARK MATTER  surrounding the Andromeda galaxy  ??

 

Bingo - it is antigravitino trail that is deflected away from M31 as it is surrounded with dark matter!