A meteor trail (?)

Emil Ivanov · Post by **Emil Ivanov** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 12:44 pm

Hello everybody,

this morning I was taking a series of images of the beautiful down conjunction Moon – Pleiades – Jupiter – Venus – Hyades.
Later on the computer screen I noticed on one of the images a strange formation, which I suppose, can be a meteor trail. (It’s seen on the left top, at the left from Pleiades):

: Click to view full size image

This wouldn’t be so unusual, if this object is seen on two or more images. But on the previous (taken some 40 sec. before) and the next (about 40 sec. after) images there are no trace of this thing.Here theese two images:
before:

: Click to view full size image

and after:

: Click to view full size image

The pictures was taken with Canon 40D camera and 28mm /f 4.0 lens at 1000 ISO. Exp. time was 20 sec. each.

During the exposures I have lit the foreground trees with flashlight, but I was behind the camera, so this can’t be a reflection, moreover I didn’t change my position for the three images.

For those who want see the full-res images, I have uploaded also them:
IMG_0724
IMG_0725 (this is the image with supposed meteor trail)
IMG_0726

My question is: can this be really a meteor trail, or it's something else? What do you think?

Thanks for looking and best regards,
Emil

geckzilla · Post by **geckzilla** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 1:33 pm

Hmm, not even the faintest trace in the before and after photos. Can it really have appeared and disappeared that quickly? It could be the trail of an insect flying. Seems kind of erratic, though.

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 2:36 pm

Emil Ivanov wrote:this morning I was taking a series of images of the beautiful down conjunction Moon – Pleiades – Jupiter – Venus – Hyades.
Later on the computer screen I noticed on one of the images a strange formation, which I suppose, can be a meteor trail.

It looks very much like a meteor dust train. However, if it is, the amount of distortion is consistent with the sort of train that is usually visible for several minutes. It's possible that the high altitude winds were extremely fast, and the train distorted and dissipated in under a minute, but that's unlikely. Also, a meteor large enough to produce a train like this would probably have been bright enough that you'd have seen the flash, even if you weren't looking at that part of the sky. So the answer is, we don't know for sure what it it. I've seen moths close to the lens produce effects similar to this, so that's another possibility.

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Sat Jul 14, 2012 2:53 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
I've seen moths close to the lens produce effects similar to this, so that's another possibility.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... an#p142634

(And what has Emil been smoking?)

Emil Ivanov · Post by **Emil Ivanov** » Sun Jul 15, 2012 1:58 pm

geckzilla wrote:It could be the trail of an insect flying. Seems kind of erratic, though.

Chris Peterson wrote:I've seen moths close to the lens produce effects similar to this, so that's another possibility.

geckzilla, Chris,
I agree with you, seems that I have illuminated some kind of flying insect with my head flashlight

.

neufer wrote:(And what has Emil been smoking?)

neufer, I'm not smoker, it's dangerous for the voice

Greetings to all of you, Emil

Starship Asterisk*

A meteor trail (?)

A meteor trail (?)

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Re: A meteor trail (?)

Emil and the Night Visitor

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