What is this? Meteor activity or asteroids? Weird photo taken last night.

Edit: Since I can't find a single picture of Satellite Flare that shows any sort of a curve in the image as these 3 lights have here and I can't find Sat Flare with more than one source for the flare and this image has 3 - this isn't satellite flare. I am not saying it is a space ship. It might more likely be debris of some sort that fell out of the sky but I have examined enough pictures of sat flare now to know this is not that particular FO so this is still U.


You can see a white object going one way and two purplish flares leaving in another. This might be some sort of collision - they might be all falling as opposed to traveling in different directions since at those heights and with this camera it is hard to judge "falling" or moving off. This is a very cheap video camera. My last heart attacker ran off with my good one. This won't even pick up the stars, so I figure this must have been pretty bright. It is a hazy night and I was reading in one of the threads here, Fleets of UFO's over major cities, thought this was a good night to see how this new video camera works and see if I can capture that Venus, Mars and Saturn triangle in the night skies as well. I got this on one of the stills. Can't guess what it is, so I figured UFO is a good spot for it and see if anyone else has a guess.
It isn't flares or lanterns and with the close proximity planes and I think also helicopters are out, but if they are meteor or asteroid activity as they appear on this cheap camera why are they going in opposite directions, mass might explain why they are different colors, so did something explode and if so what? Perhaps something mundane exploded on reaching the earths atmosphere. I know there are people who might speculate, curious what they have to say, since I am really wondering what this is.

reply to post by newcovenant


Increase your exposure time.

It most likely is a satellite flaring.

It is very busy up there with satellites, I see them every clear night.

Originally posted by Anonymouth
reply to post by newcovenant

 

Increase your exposure time.

It most likely is a satellite flaring.

It is very busy up there with satellites, I see them every clear night.

Wow...interesting. I am wondering if you can explain that or if you have another photo of a satellite flaring I can compare it to? I have never seen or heard of such a thing but knowing nothing about these things that might be exactly what it is. I'll wait a bit since I am watching the rest of this video right now but if no response I will look it up myself. Thanks for reply. Really impressive that you see Satellites every night. That must be an awesome place to live.

reply to post by newcovenant


I have ZERO light polution being up a mountian lol

I only just saw your picture now, having zero light polution has its drawbacks, no fast internet lol

The purple would indicate to me Chromatic Aberation on the camera lenses, being a camera with short focal length (fast lens) and cheap lenses, I would say CA for the purple.

Very common on fast telescopes and bright lights.

The fuzzynes indicates to me a focus problem. Is it on autofocus? was it set to infinity prior to imaging?

The direction would also indicate to me hand movement captured in the image, if it was not mounted. Has it got Image stabilising turned on? If so it can sometimes go nuts and wobble about trying to stabilise incorrectly.

Get a cheap scope / binoculars and put a light polution filter over it and you will see a tonne of satellites whizzing every night, some even apparently chasing each other or crossing each others paths.

Im guessing your light polution is mostly high pressure sodium, so filter it out.

Two questions OP:

Where was this?
What made you look up (camera/cell phone in hand) and snap a photo?


Thanks

Originally posted by Human_Alien
Two questions OP:

Where was this?
What made you look up (camera/cell phone in hand) and snap a photo?


Thanks

It was over Boca Raton FL and the camera was mounted.
I was in the house watching TV.

These lights had to be much closer that a satellite.
Like I said I can't manage too many stars on a good night so this is something different. In the playback it looks like an ordinary streak with I took to be debris entering and burning up in the atmosphere, which happens all the time. When I checked the frame where the streak appears I got this strange dispersion of light sources.

reply to post by Anonymouth

I do get a lot of pollution here Anonymouth - that is definitely a drawback.

Sounds like you have quite an ideal spacewatching set up. Your post actually made me think rather than Network Television it would be nice to have a few space cams tuned in Live feed of Mars, dark side of the moon, deep space...you know a few channels. I would much rather watch that and then I was thinking if they could be MOTION ACTIVATED to alert or something or just a few motion activated amongst them so we might narrow down on activity. Then I thought they probably already have one of these orbiting Pluto right now.

I'd like to watch too. Deep Space 9 or something Would be cool.


No, re the focus and camera wiggle since it was mounted so there should be no interference that way and since it was a video there's no way for me to adjust exposure. It is automatic too. Why would this be the only thing that shows up on the film unless it was "different" brighter and closer or a combination of both? Everything else captured had the same camera limitations, (and this was outstanding) including many airplanes that did not show up as anything more than a faint dotted line invisible unless you are looking for faint sources of light?

Originally posted by Anonymouth
reply to post by newcovenant

 

Increase your exposure time.

It most likely is a satellite flaring.

It is very busy up there with satellites, I see them every clear night.

Just for a comparison here is a Satellite Flare pic below, but with 30 second exposure (that's a lot of light) ....also I wonder why only one glint off this satellite, coming from many places on it apparently, all at once...when camera mounted and conditions the same for an hour?

Satellite flare (also known as satellite glint) is the phenomenon caused by the reflective surfaces on satellites (such as antennas or solar panels) reflecting sunlight directly onto the Earth below and appearing as a brief, bright "flare".

en.wikipedia.org...




This is Sat Flare with a 30 second exposure and since mine was a video there was no exposure time it was real life. With a longer exposure wouldn't that sort of create an unnatural effect where there is none really as in this picture. I am looking for a picture that resembles the one captured above.

reply to post by Anonymouth


Now that I see the pictures of Satellite Flare and cannot find a single one that has any kind of curve or turn in it I don't see how these three light sources in the same location can be those.

Also in all the available photos of Satellite Flare there is not more than one source of light. This one has not 2 but 3. Cannot find Sat Flare that is curved. I cannot locate a picture where there is more than one reflection visible at the same time.

Just setup a camera with long exposure setup the same time every night at the same RA / Dec (or Alt Az) coordinates and see what you capture.

I assume you have an Alt-Az mount (Up /down, left / right on a horizontal plane).

You could add a wedge to it to make it an equitorial I suppose if you want to track on RA.

I have an EQ5 mount, can take about 10kg, that is probably the minimum rated equitorial mount you want to buy but they cost about €250.

As you said it is a cheap video camera, that is an indication to me of aberations cropping up in the image.

Most cheap mounts have vibration problems, and also why astronomers avoid cheap mounts.

Vibrations can come from air, road traffic, or just passing by or touching the thing, it can take a few seconds to settle down.

Are you sure you cannot use MANUAL focusing? Also a remote control (wired or wireless - but not IR) is a good idea to lower vibrations.

reply to post by Anonymouth


Yes it is possible the house was shaking. The mount is the roof. Thanks for the tips but this isn't sat flare since I have compared it to other photos of that phenomena and they are dissimilar to a great degree so much so they are incompatible as an explanation. Do you have any other possibilities this might be? Maybe debris?

Originally posted by newcovenant
reply to post by Anonymouth

 

Yes it is possible the house was shaking. The mount is the roof. Thanks for the tips but this isn't sat flare since I have compared it to other photos of that phenomena and they are dissimilar to a great degree so much so they are incompatible as an explanation. Do you have any other possibilities this might be? Maybe debris?

Get Stellarium and loop through 24 hours and see which satellites cross over that area.

reply to post by Anonymouth


This is by far the most interesting picture of flare off a Satellite. So thanks for getting me interested in that little mystery:


It was taken over Norway (of course) and they think it is the aurora bouncing off a Satellite and causing an image of the same satellite to appear as a ghostly image in the light from the aurora phenomena.

Jan. 26, 2010 -- This was the view looking over the small town of Andenes, Norway, on Jan. 20. Snaking across the sky from horizon to horizon was a dynamic green aurora, signaling to the inhabitants of Earth that the sun was spraying us with an intense stream of energetic particles. The photographer, Per-Arne Mikalsen, captured the resulting aurora using a Canon EOS 450D camera (with a Sigma 10-20mm 1:4-5.6 DC HSM lens), but it wasn't until after he took the photo that he realized that he'd captured something unexpected in his lens. After communicating with Norwegian aurora expert Truls Lynne Hansen of the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory, compelling evidence that the green structure hidden in the top right of the photograph could be a reflection (or 'flare') from a satellite flying hundreds of miles above the intense aurora.

First Sighting of Auroral Light Bouncing Off Satellite? :
This you might have to scroll over to get the image in sight but I wanted to place it in context of the original photo because I didn't think people would believe it was real. I still doubt the explanation on this one too though. lol

news.discovery.com...

Aurora Mystery Solved?
news.discovery.com...

reply to post by newcovenant


One thing you can discount and therefore shorten the list of candidates is an asteroid. Although they occasionally pass close to the Earth, they are rarely visible to the naked eye and even then you have to know where to look as they are very very dim. They also appear static. Given the apparent brightness of the object (and you mentioned this possiblity yourself) I'd say that space junk entering the atmosphere combined with the lens flare that another poster mentioned is quite plausible.

I just didn't want to start a whole new thread but although my small camera does not take high quality photos it takes good film. Enlarging gives interesting pixel results.

These are all UFO images where I have ruled out plane and debris. (except the last which we all think is debris except one guy thinks its satellite flare) Anyway they are solitary objects that appeared to flash once and then vanished in an otherwise solid black surrounding night sky. I captured this shots. They showed in a single frame and no more.

This first was a pink blip on the film and then gone. It was not a plane, I am fairly certain of that.

And the blue (and pink images) appeared as a blue (and pink) balls of light, much different than the streaked looking effect of falling objects and debris which you see in the last pic. The round objects by contrast, as did the pink ship appeared to be HOVERING STATIONARY and not moving at all. This is why they are of particular interest and I have enlarged them so grotesquely.

I like the patterns and the clear "source" of the light.
What they are is a mystery. Any guesses?



Tech error/these are too small..

Here is an enhanced shot of the pinkish dot

Originally posted by Anonymouth
Increase your exposure time.

The photograph posted by the OP looks like it's suffering from a bad case of camera shake, so it's pretty much impossible to tell what is going on.

Increasing exposure time won't do much good unless the camera is mounted on something stable eg. a tripod.