Help! What have I captured on my sensor? - 27th December 2016

[ath]

Hi IISer's

Spending Xmas at my folks place in Gippsland I headed out to capture the night sky as I always do (much to the dismay of everyone around me). In an effort to smash the number of actuation's my DSLR shutter life can sustain (and in the hope of capturing meteors), I headed out against all advice. It was so muggy that there was a fog reminiscent of winter completely covering the padocks but being a city slicker I figured it might clear. I set the camera up on the tripod and set the intervalometer off. In my peripheral vision I noticed a light shooting up from the horizon coming from a part of the sky that normally has none. I've shot in this location hundreds of times and admittedly it is pretty close to the princes hwy. Highly annoyed at the 'seeing' if you could even call it that I pointed my camera towards the light (I could hardly see a few meters in front me let alone any stars but I'm stubborn. I'll get to the point. I captured something that I'm hoping you guys and gals might be able to shed some light on for me (no pun intended).

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q12/ath_/___ATH_0637.jpg~original (http://s132.photobucket.com/user/ath_/media/___ATH_0637.jpg.html)

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 10.2mm @ ISO 6400, 15 secs.

Lens correction (crop) + NR done in LR. Happy to provide RAW's if that'll help. The light appears on approximately 60 frames until it eventually disappears. Might do a quick timelpase. Either way, I'm excited to have seen something in the sky that I've never seen/captured before.

Keen to hear your thoughts. Didn't seem to be much Aurora activity that night, am at a loss to explain it. Rocket launch? Geostationary satellite flare? I'm not well versed at Calsky, but Stellarium yielded little to assist me. I dunno. HELP! :D Thanks again and Happy New Year IIS.

ath

[Wavytone]

That's the min-min light

[Nikolas]

looks like an aurora to me

[cometcatcher]

Was there a storm in the distance? It looks a bit like lightning sprites, although they usually radiate in the infrared. Is your camera standard unmodified?

Do you have other frames?

[ath]

Thanks for your input guys. I'd never heard of the Min Min lights before, it was an interesting read, Jack Pettigrew's explanation of Min Min doesn't sound beyond the realms of possibility (not that my image is necessarily of a Min Min Light), thanks for the 'up' though. :) I've never seen or captured an Aurora before so wouldn't know what I was looking at without confirmation from kind folk such as yourselves. @cometcatcher I'll upload other frames later today (the one shown in my original post is the 1st of a 60 to 80 frame sequence during which time the light slowly fades before dissappearing). Cheers again.

[N1]

A most interesting capture and phenomenon, particularly if there is no big change in shape between frames. I understand most storm related light phenomena are highly transient and would not last long enough for that. An aurora (specifically what's called a proton arc) might, but this looks nothing like an aurora to me. Plus the direction is wrong, and the Kp wasn't particularly high (ftp://ftp-out.sws.bom.gov.au/data/Geophysical/Historical%20Data/Indices/K-Index/Launceston/lstindexK.161227.gif) that night. It may well be the result of human activity ;)

[billdan]

Could be the LMC distorted by light pollution from Melbourne.

[colinmlegg]

Could be due to bright ground lights reflecting off the haze layer, similar to light pillars seen in northern climes - http://www.kuriositas.com/2011/08/light-pillar-natures-beautiful-special.html

I saw something similar to your pic in Karijinni Park in the Pilbara. Was caused by lights from a nearby mine reflecting off high mist.

[ath]

It did look LMC-ish in size and shape at first glance but the LMC was much higher in the sky and much further south. Colinmlegg's suggestion sounds probable, as per the very (very) crude TL below :) I forgot to mention that my camera isn't modded. Thanks for all your input everyone!!

80 x 15sec frames:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-iA24rxK4

[skysurfer]

Maybe a reflection of city lights by an aircraft landing / taking off from MEL/Tullamarine ?

[cometcatcher]

It's not sprites.

[N1]

Yep, I'm with Colin - a "false aurora".

[MortonH]

The sky is very murky in that corner of the photo. I think it's some kind of reflection off the fog. It could have been a car some distance away that happened to stop for a while with its lights on and the angle just happened to cause this reflection from your perspective.

[speach]

looks like headlights to me. Use to see that type of thing from my former home. When a car is far away and is going up a hiil that what you see.

[DarkKnight]

If you check this thread of mine you will see a classic example of lens flare.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=136217

I was using a 14mm lens and the light source, the moon, was way, way out of the frame. The conditions sound similar as I was having problems keeping the condensation off the lens element. I'm guessing the red tinge is some sort of reflection from the red lead coloured poppet head.

With a 10.5mm UWA lens light intrusion could come from anywhere.

[N1]

Hi Kev, interesting thought but maybe not what this is. From what I've seen so far, lens flare will usually occur along a line between the centre of the image and the light source causing the flare. That could be a lot of places but still not "anywhere". It should allow the OP to clear that up with a fair bit of certainty, but still wouldn't explain a) the soft appearance of the light patch and b) the fact that it seems to change (in the video) shape and brightness in sync with the area immediately surrounding it. B) is exactly what I'd expect to see if a cloud was the cause of a false aurora embedded in a more widespread reflection of the same light source. I conclude it's likely to be a false aurora :)