Hi, I'm new in this forum. I'm the french translator of APOD and I saw a link to this forum in the next Tuesday picture.
I would like to have some more informations:
- How many time it has taken to the object to go from an horizon to the other? In the APOD animation, the object is visible from 14:19 to 14:39 and covers only about 1/3 of the sky! It's very slow for a satellite, except for a high orbit one. But high orbite satellite are generally dim.
- At what time does the Sun set on mid-december in Hawaii (please, could you answer me in UT?). I would like to estimate the elevation of the Sun under the horizon. In the animation, the object seems to appear slowly, as it get out of the Earth'shadow. With the exact time of this apparition, it could be possible to estimate the altitude of the object.
- What's the distance between HL and MK?
- Notice: it couldn't be "Wonder Woman" with her aeroplane going to her secret Island (may be near Hawaii) because her plane is transparent (made with a very good multicoated material I think...), and despite her golden clothes, she doesn't have the good albedo. May be she's dead since the time of the TV series.
I think this object could be a meteorologic balloon (stratospheric) wich is relatively slow and, with its huge surface made with a high albedo material, can be very bright.
What do you think about my hypothesis?
I've just made a quick search and discovered that such a ballon was launch on december 16th (
http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1016963). But unfortunatly for my hypothesis, it was launched from Antarctica and made some revolution around the South Pole.
I hope my English is good enough to have been well understood
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)