Topic: Cold, clear night in Dixie...

[Intheswamp]

Looking toward the west on a cold southern night...

[DanS]

Nice clear night. Is that a satellite over about 10 o'clock to the furthest tree on the right?

[Randall Kayfes]

Looks like the milky way in the center?

[Intheswamp]

Howdy ya'll.

Dan, I'm not sure what that was.  I'm no experienced nightsky shooter, but normally what I've encontered with pulsed light streaks are normally what I take to be airplanes.  That streak wasn't pulsed but rather solid looking with a brighter/thicker end to it (towards the right).  There was lots of activity in that direction (west) as evidenced by a few other shots I took that had other streaks in them.  The pictures were taken around 4-1/2 hours after the sun had set so I don't know if a satellite would have reflected the sun from over the horizon by then...???

kaymann, I think it is part of the Milky Way.  Direction would have been about right for it.

It looks like the clouds are moving back in for several days...*maybe* have a chance to refine my rookie techniques tonight, but it doesn't look promising.

Here's another one from down at my bee hives showing Orion coming up...

[Randall Kayfes]

Excellent photo of Orion and that area is very good for com satellites.
You did very good lighting up the bee hives without blasting them out
Congratulations!

Randall

[SlowModem]

That's a good picture!   

[Intheswamp]

Randall, Greg,...thanks.  I'm not that good with the camera but I enjoy trying.   I've seen your work, Randall...yours *is* very good!    

Here's a really crooked horizon line shot of the beehive showing "something" in the sky...what would that be?  I have thought that these types of pulsed light streaks like that were airplanes but could they be satellites?  The streak in the weather station picture (the first one) is a solid, unbroken streak while this one is "pulsed".  ??

Ed

[Intheswamp]

Here's a crop of the streak...I'm curious as to what it would be.

[Randall Kayfes]

"typically a dot-dot-dot would be a plane. However it could (very small chance) be a a satellite.
The solids with consistent density are usually satellites.
If you know the shutter speed you can determine the orbital period of the satellite.
A variable density line with one oscillation (Dimmer-Brighter-Dimmer) would be a meteor or meteorite (is the object that lands on the earth).

[DanS]

Here's a crop of the streak...I'm curious as to what it would be.

Sometimes a satellite will reflect light off it's panels as it passes over and depending on the speed of it's rotation can cause pulses or blips of the reflection. Longer pulses of light = slower rotation, short pulses = faster rotation. A long enough camera exposure can catch a series of these reflections and it's one possibility here in your shot. 

[Intheswamp]

Randall, the dim...bright...dim scenario makes sense.  I was playing with a Canon point-n-shoot camera and an intervalometer (CHDK) trying to catch star field movement when something in the images caught my eye...
http://www.beeweather.com/wximages/Stars01-2lights.JPG

What was interesting was that when I went back and looked closer at the preceding images I found this streak two frames prior to the explosions.  These exposures were probably 16-18 seconds long, so there was possibly that long of a gap between the streak and the explosions...I just thought that it was interesting.
http://www.beeweather.com/wximages/Stars01-1light.JPG

Dan, what you describe of the panels may very well be what I saw in the other picture I mentioned...it was more like the light was wobbling from side to side but whatever it was was going in a straight line...it makes sense to me that panels rotating could cause what I saw, but man, that seems like a long way to see those panels.  I guess, though, an airplane's lights would even be smaller, eh?  I'll see if I can find that image (one of these days I'm going to get a better filing system!  ).

[Intheswamp]

Here's a cropped shot of the streak in the old picture....

[Intheswamp]

...and a cropped shot of the double explosion. (yelp, *real* blurry!) 

[SlowModem]

Hasn't the space station been flying over lately?

[Randall Kayfes]

Greg I believe the ISS is usually a very solid light source (I could be sooo wrong).

Image 0480 and 0482 if I had to guess would be meteors.

And as always I could be 180 degrees wrong on all accounts!

Randall

[DanS]

I'm still leaning toward satellite reflections.

[Intheswamp]

Greg, I'll have to check on the ISS.  I did manage to see it this past summer...I kept watching the direction that it was supposed to come from and didn't see it.  After a short period of time I felt like we had missed it and for some reason looked straight up above me and there it was.  That sucker travels FAST!!!  I have no idea why we didn't see it approaching us...that was kind of strange.  Oh, and it was broad daylight when we watched it...a shiney, glinty light hauling bu...ggy.

Randall, I agree with you on those two pictures being a meteor.  The interesting thing to me was the 18-second or so gap between the streak and the explosion....in other words there was an 18-second frame between those to shots.  Makes me wonder happened in between the streak and the explosion?  Also, if a meteor explodes in the sky and no one is around to hear it explode...does it make a noise? 

Dan, I dunno, but this winter I hope to try and photograph some more nightsky shots and see if I can find any interesting things.  I might need to look up some of the satellite tracking sites.  I never did try to put together that Bearcat scanner to retrieve weather satellite images...maybe look back into that, too.  I need something to get me re-invigorated about things in general...starting to tinker with the camera is helping!

Ed