(meteorobs) Leonid Meteor Shower - Bright Meteor or What?

[Bernd Klemt]

Hello Russ,

for me it looks like the trail of an Iridium flare though the trail is rather 
long. You can check here
http://www.heavens-above.com/
whether one was transiting for your location and time (or perhaps another bright  
satellite / ISS).

Clear skies
Bernd

> Hello,
> 
> I have recently acquired a number of almost all-sky images taken during the Leonid
> meteor shower (Monday morning, Nov. 17, 2014), using a Samyang 8mm f/2.8 fisheye
> lens on a Sony NEX-5N camera. These images were of 35-second duration with 2
> seconds between images, overall 326 covering some 3 hours, 10 minutes. On two
> adjacent images there was a bright moving object of uncertain identity. I used
> DeepSkyStacker to composite these two onto a single image as shown below. 
> 
> 
> Based on the total length of the trail (on a computer monitor) and the length of
> the two-second gap, I estimated the total time involved in the entire trail to be
> 8.8 seconds: Total length of entire trail = 145 mm Length of 2-second gap = 33 mm
> (thus 16.5 mm per second). Total time of trail = 145 mm  ÷ 16.5 mm per second =
> 8.8 seconds
> 
> Here are some points to consider and some questions I have had:
> The curve of the trail is largely due to severe distortion (*see photo below)
> caused by the Samyang 8 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. The time of less than 9 seconds
> seems too short for an airplane to have covered that much sky. While I was not
> looking at that part of the sky when the trail was produced, I heard no sound of a
> fast moving, low elevation airplane. Why did the light go out after just nine
> seconds? It would seem that would not be the case for an aircraft. The total
> length of time covered by the composite exposure is 72 seconds (35 sec. 1st
> exposure + 2 sec. interval between exposures + 35 seconds 2nd exposure). Yet the
> moving light lasted only 9 seconds. Two flashes appear in the upper half of the
> trail but not in the lower half - hard to reconcile with an airplane. Nine seconds
> seems very long for a fireball meteor. But perhaps it was very slow moving. *
> Here´s an example of the distortion caused by the fisheye lens:
> 
> 
> 
> I posted some of my Leonid images on the DPReview Astrophotography forum. There
> has some discussion there as to the identity of this object. Perhaps you would
> like to review the discussion found on the following link:
> 
> http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54768726
> 
> I would appreciate hear what some of you say as to the identity of this object.
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Russ Milton
> re.milton at frontier.com
> 
> 
> 

Bernd Klemt

Sternwarte Herne, MPC code A18
Herne, Germany

e-mail: info at sternwarte-herne.de
http://www.sternwarte-herne.de