Starship Asterisk*

The new HL CONCAM3 is returning excellent images last night for the first time. Last night one of them (at least) shows a streak that I am trying to identify. Here is it is:

Note that the image is really upsidedown but I am sure that will be fixed soon.

Anyway the corresponding image from the next Island over, on MK, taken (nearly) during the same time interval (and right side up) does not show the streak:


Therefore, although the streak looks to be a satellite, I think it must be created so low that it is an airplane. Thoughts?

- RJN

RJN wrote:The new HL CONCAM3 is returning excellent images last night for the first time. Last night one of them (at least) shows a streak that I am trying to identify. Here is it is:

Note that the image is really upsidedown but I am sure that will be fixed soon.

Anyway the corresponding image from the next Island over, on MK, taken (nearly) during the same time interval (and right side up) does not show the streak:


Therefore, although the streak looks to be a satellite, I think it must be created so low that it is an airplane. Thoughts?

- RJN

It seems to me that these are airplace tracks. An image on another night at HL shows a streak almost at the same location, though with some time difference.

I noticed this streak too.....if you look at the whole sequence for that period of time i also saw that the surrounding buildings features in the periphery of the cam image were breifly illuminated during the passage of this object. If this is in fact the case then the argument for a meteor becomes more valid.
I think the Haleakala web cam is just perfect. As a regular user of the Faulkes Telescope it has greatly enhanced the experience of robotic astronomy....thankyou to those responsible.
Sam Gibbs

Sam i am wrote:I noticed this streak too.....if you look at the whole sequence for that period of time i also saw that the surrounding buildings features in the periphery of the cam image were breifly illuminated during the passage of this object. If this is in fact the case then the argument for a meteor becomes more valid.
I think the Haleakala web cam is just perfect. As a regular user of the Faulkes Telescope it has greatly enhanced the experience of robotic astronomy....thankyou to those responsible.
Sam Gibbs

Another feature that can be usefull is real-time all-sky opacity maps. Haleakala will soon start generating some.

I think that the airplane is just to low, and the two concams are too far from each other to see it.

Also, this airplane is at the north of Haleakala, while MK is at the south. Maybe if the airplane was at the south of Haleakala it would be also visible by MK.

Anyway, the airplane should be no higher than 3 or 4 miles above Haleakala, and 2 or 3 miles above Mauna Kea. I don't think we should expect getting parallax for these kind of cases.

It has to be an airplane because of two things:

• the length of the trail--meteor trails are rarely/never this long
• The width in pixels--satellite flashes are thinner as they are more precise points of light