Tumbling satellite maybe?

[Tim]

Just going through some subs of M42 tonight I found this one with an unusual satellite trail.

It has regular breaks in the line as you can see.

Tumbling satellite perhaps? I have seen only one of these visually, and haven't had a trail like this on an image before.

Cheers

[FraserClarke]

Yeah probably. I've had this before in images (in one case it was a geostationary satellite because it moved exactly 15"/second east -- took me a little while to work that one out ).

Shame you don't have both ends of the trail, or you could probably get an orbit, identify it and work out the spin period (maybe you can anyway from the start/end point & knowing the start/end time of the exposure??