Ribbons in space?

[Tim]

After seeing Martin B's gorgeous M63, I thought "gotta have a crack at that" and so lined up with my c9.25 last night, to add to my "galaxies near the plough" project.

It must have been on the flightpath for every airport going, as sub after sub was streaked with lines. But it wasn't until I went through the individual ones that I noticed this one.

I dont know what it was, I'd say a low flying aircraft, but look at the way the light trail twists. Anybody got any ideas or theory about what would make it do that?

[CELESCOPE]

very rare nebula that one TIM, ITS CALLED THE tram line nebula , very high in HA

[barkis]

Well the sun would be below the Norhern horizon, and therefore it's light would be passing through the earths mucky atmosphere which would account for the colour. The object is rotational, and they look like solar panels. Iridium ? Na!. couldn't be. Too bright and too big?

April 1st.?

Check iridium passes for the time you were imaging the galaxy.

Looks very nice whatever it is.

Ron.

[Aza]

Strange! But a lovely looking shot what ever it is

[Psychobilly]

Pair of military jets perhaps...

Peter....

[Sam]

Lower rotating beacon would be my guess.

[trudie]

Don't have a clue, but very nice anyway, I really like that.

Trudie

[Psychobilly]

Lower rotating beacon would be my guess.

Indeed low enough to cros the FOV between white strobe flashes and only catch the center and one wing tip light...

[roundycat]

it looks very sharp, could it be something lighting up a con-trail?

Dennis

[Tim]

A rotating beacon sounds reasonable, but do beacons on planes rotate? Is that what makes them look like they are flashing?

Here's an interesting thing, it wasn't until I really stretched the stacked image, really really stretched it, that the trail came out. Which I guess means the kappa sigma stacking was really doing its job, good job because no end of the pics had lines across.

[rich_t]

Hi,

A couple of months ago I saw some orange lights moving silently overhead. I did a bit of searching around and decided they were flying Chinese lanterns.

See Sky lantern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you have a search on the web, there's lots of places selling them in the UK. Maybe that's what it was?

They looked just the same colour as the ones on your photo.

Cheers,

Rich.