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

[Russell Milton]

Hello Bernd,
Thanks for replying to my inquiry. I at first thought it must be a satellite of some sort, being on two separate frames. But there is no Iridium flare predicted for the date in question. Maybe some other satellite had a flare, or maybe some space junk reentering the atmosphere. In the end I may never know what it was.

Best Regards,
Russ
Dec 1, 2014, at 5:26 AM, Bernd Klemt <bernd.klemt at hs-bochum.de> wrote:

> 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
> 
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