Interesting Items...

MikeSh said:
A meteor seems the most likely to me.
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Maybe, I thought of that but it would have to have been very bright to register. Short streak meteors like that don't tend to be bright. My camera isn't suited to that sort of thing.
 
Yeah, that's it. It's where the gable end finishes, I was tucked around the corner to get away from a street light.
 
Black Hole said:
Maybe, I thought of that but it would have to have been very bright to register. Short streak meteors like that don't tend to be bright. My camera isn't suited to that sort of thing.
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If it was an 8 second exposure it must have been fast moving. As it fades from dim to bright and back it wasn't a fixed light travelling (that I can think of).
Any chance it's lens flare from something? (Though it looks a bit straight for that.)
 
MikeSh said:
As it fades from dim to bright and back it wasn't a fixed light travelling (that I can think of).
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Don't you know about Iridium flares? They're not so common as they were a couple of years ago, but occur when a satellite's solar panels catch the sun and reflect it in a particular direction. If you are bang on the beam it can be very bright (and very short lived), but off-beam the intensity could be anything. I guess it doesn't exclude other satellites, but Iridium were the main culprits.

From https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/celestial-objects-to-watch/observing-iridium-flares/:

1588492163423.jpeg

As my streak is white rather than coloured, that is another contra-indication of a meteor.
 
Black Hole said:
Don't you know about Iridium flares?
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No I didn't. Interesting.
That picture sample is a 10 minute exposure and you can see the background stars move significantly. Are there satellites that will move as far as in your picture in 8 seconds?
 
Decomissioning means that Iridium flares are not as predictable as they used to be; I don't think that Heavens Above has a prediction page any more.
But, if it was a bright satellite then call up this page, set your location and date and see if anything fits the time.

Daily predictions for brighter satellites

Satellite predictions and other astronomical data customised for your location.
www.heavens-above.com www.heavens-above.com
 
MikeSh said:
Are there satellites that will move as far as in your picture in 8 seconds?
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Definitely. I take it you've not seen any of the low-orbit ones such as StarLink, or even the ISS. In fact, that flare may well have been a lot shorter than 8s.
 
hairy_mutley said:
Decomissioning means that Iridium flares are not as predictable as they used to be; I don't think that Heavens Above has a prediction page any more.
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Absolutely, it's just that bh has not caught up with decommissioning and that they're just as good as gone .
 
This is a good tool for star charts: https://skyandtelescope.org/interactive-sky-chart/

Here's its output (massaged a bit to mimic EP's enhancement of my frame as closely as possible), which I reckon is a perfect match:

1588500613506.png

The faintest star on the chart is mag 4.8 (bottom left corner), actually a star in Lynx (the rest are Ursa Major).

FWIW, I have identified them all (magnitude followed by designation and name, if any):

IMG_4685negannotated.jpg
 
/df said:
There was a proposal for Unicode characters to represent IEC power symbols. Apparently it only took 5 years to get symbols accepted (last year) that are used on billions of manufactured items, by which time historical linguists had been able to represent symbols used on a single 3000-year old artefact with Unicode symbols for more than 10 years, which perhaps says something about the make-up of the Unicode committees.
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That is interesting, I knew nothing of it. How do you conclude those "hieroglyphs" (for want of a better word) are available in Unicode?
 
I didn't know about the power symbols either. The ttf font file that seems to be available doesn't work for me. The font is empty when installed. The font file itself has contents. On here I can copy and paste ⏻, but I can't insert it directly. Sometimes I can see it and sometimes I can't . Isn't there enough to worry about?:frantic:
 
At risk of stirring things up again:

There's a SpaceX launch tonight, watchable on NASA's YouTube channel:


It is due to dock with the ISS tomorrow, so will be in a similar orbit. The ISS should be visible going over at about 9.20 tonight; the launch is at 9.33, and should pass over here around 9.50. It might not launch at all, the weather isn't good in Florida.

In case anybody is tempted to quibble, I'm citing the Radio Times website and Tim Peake:

966A6299-202D-4261-AC4A-DB85F9A7ED76.jpeg
 
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Launch scrubbed, ISS not sighted (HeavensAbove reckoned the sky would be too light, and it seems it was).

Next launch window Saturday.
 
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