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[ap-ug] Challenge object: Tiny faint galaxy grouping in Ursa Major
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W Hilmo
I think that it's an aircraft, not a satellite.
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The reason is that there are at least 4 trails visible in the frame that are parallel to each other. There are the two corkscrew shaped ones, the bright fuzzy trail to the right, and then a much fainter fuzzy trail a bit further to the right, in the lower right corner. I'm guessing that all 4 of the trails were from a single object. And actually, as I keep looking at it, there is a 5th trail that is very faint, just to the left of the bright fuzzy trail. I'm having trouble thinking about a cause of the corkscrew trails, though. Maybe they are LED lights that are either circular, or causing a circular reflection. LED lights pulse rapidly. If this is an aircraft, depending on how quickly it passed through the field, the repeated pattern could be a result of that pulsing.
On 4/27/22 10:01 PM, Jay Freeman via
groups.io wrote:
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Roland Christen
Maybe a high flying helicopter? Drone? Tardis?
Rolando
-----Original Message-----
From: W Hilmo <y.groups@...> To: main@ap-ug.groups.io Cc: main@ap-gto.groups.io Sent: Thu, Apr 28, 2022 7:59 am Subject: Re: [ap-gto] [ap-ug] Challenge object: Tiny faint galaxy grouping in Ursa Major
I think that it's an aircraft, not a satellite.
The reason is that there are at least 4 trails visible in the frame that are parallel to each other. There are the two corkscrew shaped ones, the bright fuzzy trail to the right, and then a much fainter fuzzy trail a bit further to the right, in the lower right corner. I'm guessing that all 4 of the trails were from a single object. And actually, as I keep looking at it, there is a 5th trail that is very faint, just to the left of the bright fuzzy trail. I'm having trouble thinking about a cause of the corkscrew trails, though. Maybe they are LED lights that are either circular, or causing a circular reflection. LED lights pulse rapidly. If this is an aircraft, depending on how quickly it passed through the field, the repeated pattern could be a result of that pulsing. On 4/27/22 10:01 PM, Jay Freeman via
groups.io wrote:
If you zoom the posted image, there are two "spiral"
trails, one much fainter than the other, side by side. The
faint trail extends farther toward the bottom of the frame
than the bright one -- in fact, off the frame -- which I
suspect makes it unlikely that one trail is an optical or
processing artifact of the other.
If the object(s) is(are) actually
"spiraling", the rate of rotation is awfully fast --
remember, the lateral motion is at orbital speed, likely
at an angular rate on the order of a degree per second as
seen from the ground. Might alternatively be something
rapidly flashing, reflecting off something ring-shaped.
How far off the zenith was the line of sight
for the images? Knowing that, and remembering that an arc
second is about one meter at 200 Km, and assuming that it
is high enough to be in orbit, would give a lower bound on
the size of the thing.
Could it be closer than in orbit?
I think the big mystery is, that there appear
to be two of them..
-- Jay Reynolds Freeman
---------------------Jay_Reynolds_Freeman@... http://JayReynoldsFreeman.com (personal web site) On Apr 27, 2022, at 6:54 PM, Roland Christen via groups.io <chris1011@...> wrote:
-- Roland Christen Astro-Physics
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On 4/28/2022 8:59 AM, W Hilmo wrote:
I'm having trouble thinking about a cause of the corkscrew trails, though.I'm guessing a helicopter with lights on the blade tips. --- Mike
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