Unknown Satellite Crossing The Sun

Taken by Richard Schmidt on December 1, 2013 @ Burleith Observatory, Washington, DC.

Details:

While imaging sunspots we observed a fast-moving satellite with a long boom arm crossing the field of view. This sequence spans 36 milliseconds of real time. The object was moving East at 1 degree per second. Lunt LS100 solar telescope.

When I try to click on view EXIF data it comes up unavailable

Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable

Link to source on spaceweather.com

Long boom arm? I do see something though.

Can ATS solve this case?

I'm don't really have a clue what it is, but neither does the Burleith Observatory.....yet.

I have no clue either about what it is.

There is another smaller "round" thing at the tip of the "boom" protruding out of that satellite.

Very interesting!

What was this filmed with? May be a stupid question but could it be something in front of the lens?

I'll have to use George Lucas's fiction to come up with an answer...


Probe Droid.

thats one big satellite....??

What IS that thing? It's moving very fast and it looks, to my untrained eye, very large!! I guess it could be the proximity of the object between the camera and the Sun, but gosh it looks big!

pretty wild and just wondering also where it would be in conjunction with the sun, hard to say without knowing any distances.

reply to post by Misterlondon


Something like this I think.

Link to telescope

Can this be a fragment of ISON ?! ...However, the "thing" is not crossing the Sun as it suddenly appears from no-where !!!

reply to post by skyblueworld


its obviously the event horizon returning from inter-dimensional travel commin to make us gouge our eyeballs out . but on a real note awesome find and i hope we can all put our heads together to possibly find out what it is.

Looks like something that was created when the cat ate some dental floss.

It appears to have something sticking out of it, I have no clue what it is.

reply to post by skyblueworld


For those who can't see it, the "arm" is coming out the top on the left side of the object, and goes quite a ways "up".

How come this artifact appears in the middle of the field, it is like it was created there? A possible reflection?

FAlconsat 3 carried a boom like that, plus a small bar at the end of the boom. The satellite operates in LOE, and since its pretty small it might just appear like that in a telescope.

Falconsat 5/US221 is another, but it is secret, (sort of) and not much info on that.

I guess that is the next logical question: why does it appear out of nowhere? Now this is going to bug me until an answer can be found lol! I'm actually on the site via my hubby's PS3, which I didn't know I could do until yesterday, and using a keyboard plugged into a usb port. BUT it's really slow loading pages and tricky to write replies. So somebody come up with the answer already, my "research" tools are limited

it has to be big to see it against the sun.

i see the boom.
how close to the sun is it?

cool stuff, op.

I would take a guess at this being a sun spot travelling but sped up. If you look closely you can see a lighter shade around it suggesting it affects the matter around it, almost like a ripple.

reply to post by tsingtao

it has to be big to see it against the sun.

I'm not so sure about that

since none said it... ummm MERCURY??

This sequence spans 36 milliseconds of real time. The object was moving East at 1 degree per second.

reply to post by skyblueworld


WHAT ????

36 MILLISECONDS ???

-(1 millisecond is 0.001 seconds)-
33.367 milliseconds is the amount of time one frame lasts in an 29.97fps video, BUT HERE WE CLEARLY HAVE MORE THAN 1 FRAME: the object moves.

How did they manage to record that, are they using high speed cameras to record the surface of the Sun? It doesn't really make sense...