Blinking Stationary Object in the Sky

reply to post by SaturnFX


I've seen that before, it appears somewhat geostationary, but it wanders slightly, which you can't tell from the video. It blinks about every 12 seconds very shortly, and when I saw it, it was barely visible to the naked eye. I have no idea what it is.

What direction are you guys seeing this from? If it is a geosynchronous object and if you are in North America it has to be in the Southern half of the sky.

Can someone provide a constellation? I have a good night scope and a ridiculously large telescope. I could get some good stable footage to post. I can zoom to about 6min diagonally and can perform spectral analysis across the visible and NIR part of the spectrum. That will tell us if it is reflecting sunlight or not.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f06ebe71ce41.jpg[/atsimg]

edit to fix image

[edit on 13-9-2009 by dainoyfb]

That is interesting. The first thing that came to mind was that it may be a satellite in geosynchronous orbit... But I am not sure if they typically have beacons that blink like that...

Did the videographer pinpoint the location in the sky that it was in? That would help a lot if we knew that.

[edit on 13-9-2009 by gimme_some_truth]

reply to post by dainoyfb


Nice kitty.

Oh, the glass is pretty cool too.

reply to post by gimme_some_truth


Its not likely that it would have a beacon that was visible from the ground. It would require a ton of power. Its more likely that it is rotating and one of its surfaces is reflecting sunlight. I guess that could be on purpose though qualifying it as a type of beacon. A way to test for that is to see if it stops blinking when that location falls into the earths shadow every evening.

reply to post by Phage



Melitus says thanks! Shes put a lot of time and effort into it.

The geosynchronous orbit of all 'stationary' satellites is about 22,000 miles out and for obvious reasons is centred in a norrow band of sky near the celestial equator. The chances of seeing a reflection from a satellite in this position is infinitesimal. Not only is the distance too great, but the necessary alignment of satellite, observer and the Sun must be perfect. This only happens over a short period twice a year. I'd say these circumstances reduce the possiblity of seeing a geosynchronous flare by eye or camcorder to zero.

WG3

reply to post by dainoyfb


hello all, my first post.
i've seen this ca. 2-3 weeks ago from south germany (49.5°N, 8.5°E) at approx. 23.00 looking south. i was watching with my 20x80 binoculars somewhere between M7 and a star called HIP87220. it seemed to be stationary and i watched it for 15 mins or so. the object blinked every 10 seconds. maybe that's a good direction to point your scope at.

[edit on 13-9-2009 by ErwinOrb]

[edit on 13-9-2009 by ErwinOrb]

reply to post by ErwinOrb


Thanks for the helpful post.
If you are seeing it as well from there then it could mean that it is non local or that there is more than one.
I'll take a look at that part of the sky with the telescope.
Keep your eyes open and let us know if you see it again.

reply to post by dainoyfb


Having seen it on 2 different nights, in the same place,my guess is that it may be a piece of space junk that is tumbling in space and reflects the suns light at a given interval. I am at 46 n 19w the up of Michigan

In case anyone's still interested, here are the results of my video processing on the 'stationary' blinking object.
Because the movie image shakes all over the place (a sure sign of amateurism I'm afraid), I extracted the 42 'Flash' images from the rest (almost 15,000 in total), to give a reasonably small number to stabilise. As a datum point, I used the brightest star seen in all the frames and centred all 42 on that one star. This allows you to align each frame onto a single point, so any movement over the timeframe will be seen as streaks or dotted lines around the point.

Here's the result

The bright central spot is the fixed star (42 images stacked on top of each other, so now very bright). The other stars are seen as short arcs as a result of diurnal motion over the timeframe. The flasher is seen moving top to bottom as a series of dots. These flashes are separated by fractionally over 12 seconds in the original movie. It's interesting to note that this object has two flash frequencies. The regular 12 second one hides a longer one which switches off the expected flash on two or three of the 42 frames. This is in spite of all the very faint stars remaining visible. So, this isn't a result of astronomical seeing, but a real phenomenon.
In conclusion, I believe this object is a satellite, possibly decommissioned and tumbling. Tumblers are a favourite target for satellite watchers and there are literally hundreds of them (tumblers that is). The duel flash frequency is most probably a result of a diaxial tumble pattern, where every so often, the sun-reflective panels are displaced so the observer misses the flash.
Had details of the location, time, etc been provided, it may have been possible to put a name to the satellite. In any case, it's an interesting sighting.

WG3



[edit on 17-9-2009 by waveguide3]