What did I capture?

[Aus10]

Hello! one of my favorite targets to opserve is the horsehead nebula. I have two different images taken on different nights, one with and one without an UV/IR cut filter. As you can see, in the one without the filter, the triple star system Alnitak has something coming from it. I was surprised, could this possibly have been a gamma ray burst I captured? I captured another image of just the star system (at the bottom, once again no filter) and I didn't see the protrusion this time. I know that GRBs are short but extremely bright events, lasting seconds, minutes, or even longer. Does anyone have any idea what it is that I captured protruding from this star system? Did I capture a gamma ray burst? Thanks!

 

- Austin

(Captured with a Seestar S50 Smart telescope) 

[tomato]

The flares do look intriguing with a lot of apparent structure visible. However, there do seem to be similar artefacts on the other bright stars in the image (top LH corner and  the star just below the word ‘filter’), so I don’t think it’s a cosmic phenomenon. Anything else changed on your imaging set up?

[Knighty2112]

At over 1000 light years away those bursts (if indeed it is a burst) seem to be too large to be real artifacts. Perhaps some dirt/fluff/hair in the equipment perhaps? 

[Knighty2112]

2 minutes ago, tomato said:

The flares do look intriguing with a lot of apparent structure visible. However, there do seem to be similar artefacts on the other bright stars in the image (top LH corner and  the star just below the word ‘filter’), so I don’t think it’s a cosmic phenomenon. Anything else changed on your imaging set up?

Yeah, well spotted. There is a similar looking thing on another star in the top left of the image, so definitely not any real cosmic events here. 

[Aus10]

Just now, Knighty2112 said:

Yeah, well spotted. There is a similar looking thing on another star in the top left of the image, so definitely not any real cosmic events here. 

 

4 minutes ago, tomato said:

The flares do look intriguing with a lot of apparent structure visible. However, there do seem to be similar artefacts on the other bright stars in the image (top LH corner and  the star just below the word ‘filter’), so I don’t think it’s a cosmic phenomenon. Anything else changed on your imaging set up?

Thank you guys for your thoughts and insights! 

[h107]

Sadly I don't quite have anything to add in terms of what it might be but it does looks pretty cool.