Little Green Men

[midnight (Darrin)]

G'Day All,

Whilst trying startrails last night, some LGMs turned up in my image ! Well it is a good story anyway but it does have me stumped a little but most likely a satellite coming into sunlight due to being seen near sunrise.

The image is 89 separate shots stacked in Star Trails and a single dark frame taken as it was still warm last night.

Interesting anyway this green projection which is moving in a straight line and linear in movement. The mystery object is slightly left of centre and about 1/5th the way down from the top moving in a direction towards the top right of the frame. Close up it looks like some light refraction is going on but I can't pinpoint it. Any ideas??

Images taken from about 11:30pm until sunrise and the mystery object appeared in the last 8 frames before sunrise (the moon was well up before the LGM appeared) I have attached some closeups to zero in on the little blighter!

Canon 40D, 16-35mm F2.8L lense at 16mm & F8, 240Sec ISO400.

Happy to hear your thoughts and conspiracy theories etc

Cheers,
Darrin...

[jimmywrangles (James)]

Awesome photo.
A little work in photoshop should clear that right up.
No idea what the green thingy is so I'll immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and say it's definately something from Zeta Reticuli.
I hope that helped.

[iceman (Mike)]

That's a lovely star trails image, Darrin.

Not sure what the green thing is - how many frames/minutes does it appear for?

[iceman (Mike)]

I thought it might be a reflection off a bright star, too.
Venus could do that..

[midnight (Darrin)]

Originally Posted by iceman

That's a lovely star trails image, Darrin.

Not sure what the green thing is - how many frames/minutes does it appear for?

Mike, thanks for the positive comment. Each frame is 4 minutes long and the image 1st appeared in file xxx426.cr2 and remained there visible until sunrise when it was washed out. xxx426.cr2 was captured at 04:16AM WST and it is not visible in earlier frames. It also moves slower than the trail rotation - ie when looking at a nearby star, the star is advancing in a clockwise direction roughly 3 times quicker than the mystery object.

I also had a lense hood on at the time and the location of the camera was immediately west of our chook shed. So the camera was well shaded.

BTW my last useable frame was xx445.cr2 at approx 5:34AM.

Hmm - interesting.

Cheers,
Darrin...

[midnight (Darrin)]

Originally Posted by jimmywrangles

Awesome photo.
A little work in photoshop should clear that right up.
No idea what the green thingy is so I'll immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and say it's definately something from Zeta Reticuli.
I hope that helped.

When one is dealing with the cosmos, just about nothing is impossible. You just never know .

Glad you like it and no doubt my slow progression with Photoshop will eventually work its was up. Cheers, D...

[jimmywrangles (James)]

Originally Posted by midnight

When one is dealing with the cosmos, just about nothing is impossible. You just never know .

Glad you like it and no doubt my slow progression with Photoshop will eventually work its was up. Cheers, D...

If you're not comfortable with photoshop I'd be happy to have a go at fixing it.
Photoshop and I are old mates.

[jimmywrangles (James)]

I hope you don't mind but I fiddled with your pic and here it is with no green men.
It' not perfect but then I only spent a few minutes on it.
If the original is in a larger format I'd like to have a go at fixing it properly.(If you have a higher resoloution version send it to me via PM).
I had to use my photobucket account as I can't work out how to upload a pic through IIS.(I'm new here).
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...railsfixed.jpg