What was THAT............zip...FLASH - GONE?!

petethepirate · Post by **petethepirate** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 6:03 am

Morning all,
DTG here in the UK is 190644AOCT07.
Why am I up sooooooo early.....a course I was due to conduct today has been cancelled and I'm at a loose end until 1000. Annnnyyyyway!

The MMTO Sky camera all night recording on the 17th Oct this year (even though the date says 18th Oct on the vid) showed a very clear night in Arizona, clear for a couple of nights actually and no Moon....yaay! Well at precisely 03:14.49 a flash can be seen on the vid moving from left to right bottom to top....zip - gone......and it leaves a trail of whispy smoke behind like you get when you snuff out a candle.

What was it....any clues. You boffins usually have an answer. I'm thinking an alien space craft whose spent thousands of light years and vast sums of dosh and energy to get here made a tiny mistake and discovered just how far Earths atmosphere extends above the planet. Or it may have been a witch doing pre Halloween flight preps and ended up blowing more than just cobwebs away.

So have a look.........if it was an experimental aircraft that the US has been keeping quiet then you ain't 'sin me right....I was never here!

8)

BMAONE23 · Post by **BMAONE23** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 1:24 pm

Do you have a link to the movie file (cam site)? If I had to hazard an unviewed guess, The Orinid meteor shower will be peaking soon, so it might have been a marble sized chunk of Halleys Cometary Debris.

petethepirate · Post by **petethepirate** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:01 pm

BMAONE23 wrote:Do you have a link to the movie file (cam site)? If I had to hazard an unviewed guess, The Orinid meteor shower will be peaking soon, so it might have been a marble sized chunk of Halleys Cometary Debris.

BMAONE23,
Hello to you. If you go to the top of this page and select 'Night Sky live home' then select the MMTO option at the bottom right. This will take you to the Sky MMTO page. Select night time movie for the 17th October and the download should only take a few seconds if using broadband.

At exactly 03:14.49 you will see the flash coming up from left to right from the direction of Orion. The whispy smoke trail curves like an inverted C and twists around clockwise and then forms an elongated loop. As the Skycam updates every eight seconds the smoke trail is visible for quite a long time.

An object can be seen just before the smoke trail appears and the smoke seems to originate from around it.

If it is a micro meteroid then it's the first I've seen with smoke and I wonder if it made any noise!

petethepirate · Post by **petethepirate** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:19 pm

Having spent some time thinking about the zip....flash....thing I've also come to the conclusion that it was one of the Orionids. I've watched a few meteor showers in my time though and this is the first time I've known one to leave a smoke trail!
facinating all the same!