What is this?

[rat156]

OK,

Last night I was trying to capture any stray Orionid meteors, so set up the DSLR @ 17mm 30 second exposures.

About 100 frames, nothing in any of them except for this one.

What the hell is it?

There's a full frame so you can tell where it is in the sky, and a crop of the object. Taken at 0241.56 this morning.

Cheers
Stuart

[MrB]

Looks like an astronomer on another planet has a laser finder!

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Stuart,

I was going to say it could have been a meteor........but I am not going there.....:sadeyes:

Buggered if I know, especially since its green, perhaps due to the 30 sec exposure, there might have been some equipment you have that got in the way, or even a plane's starboard nav light (perhaps not as it WAS 2:46am)

My only ideas...sorry.

Cheers

Chris

[Kevnool]

Its horribly close to NGC 1365.

Besides that i cant help ya.

Cheers Kev.

[Bassnut]

Plate solve it :)

[DavidU]

Thats very odd ! The diffraction pattern is weird.

[mithrandir]

Can't get Elbrus to solve it, even after identifying some starts for it, but Comet generates some charts which suggest:

- that's close to GSC 7024-00760 (3h38m42s -35d12m15s) mag=7 or Tyc 7031-184-1 (3h36m51s -33d46m50s) mag=7

- a bit off HR 1054 (3h27m33s -35d40m53) mag=5.7

Far too bright for any of those. Who has the green laser?

[dpastern]

My guess - probably a plane's navigation light.

Dave

[renormalised]

Possible...

Stu, did you see the object move at all??

Or, was it stationary??

Just thinking....best way to test that hypothesis is to image a plane (or several) at varying distances and see what you get.

[renormalised]

Does look like the scatter of a green laser off a mirror, though.

Another thought....someone firing a laser pointer at a plane and you've caught the reflection off the fuselage.

[MrB]

Yeah, I'm in the green laser camp... it looks very monochromatic, and has familiar scatter/diffraction pattern.

[leinad]

Little green men in their little green spacecraft?
No seriously... I'll say it's possibly the night vision camera light from a copper chopper?

[cookie8]

Agree with Carl. Source:Green laser pointer. Mechanism unknown.

[rat156]

OK, here's the bits i know (or don't).

I was inside when the shot was taken, so I didn't see anything first hand.

If it was a plane, then it's strange as there is only one spot, 30 seconds would have gotten more spots from navigation lights. I have many photos of planes, they always have a trail of lights flashing on and off.

Taken with a 17-200mm lens, so no mirrors involved.

If it's a GLP, then it would have had to reflect off something, the chances of someone aiming a GLP at my lens from afar are unreasonably low. There is nothing to reflect off, see previous comments about planes.

Don't know about the Coppers, but I do know that the night vision cameras they use are IR thermal imaging cameras and don't have an external light source. Again the lack of running lights would concern me.

I have checked the previous and following frames, nothing there at all.

I'm starting to think something like a GRB?

There has to be an explanation, but it's probably terrestrial.

Anyone else out early Saturday morning in the Werribee region?

Cheers
Stuart

[desler]

Sorry Stuart,

Not me, was away at snake valley!
Good luck figuring it out!


Darren

[M54]

Hi Stuart,
Regarding the plane or helicopter idea, could it be that it only just entered the pic frame from the west as the last exposure was taken?
Molly. :shrug::)

[multiweb]

Last time I saw something like this I though I had discovered a super nova :lol: Turned out not to be in the sky at all but an actual reflection within the imaging train. It could very well be a reflection caused by stray light source on to the glass of your lens. Someone walked past with a laser, or the neighbours light switched on and off. Anything really.

[leinad]

Police choppers fly around my area a bit and do have there lights off when needed. When they slew the camera you can definitely see a green light on the camera. my 2cents anyway..

[rat156]

If that's the case it should be in the next frame, only a second or two between shots. Not there.

I really don't like the "something flying about" theories, more likely something turning on and off again.

Cheers
Stuart

[rat156]

I don't think anyone walked past, it was quarter to three, let alone with a laser. This was taken in the onservatory, mounted on the G11, which would be about 500mm below the walls, so stray light would have to have entered from above the roofline of my next door neighbors house (which was in the frame until about an hour after starting. At least that's where Orion was, where the green dot was significantly higher in the sky, almost at zenith.

My GLP is at work, so it's not mine either.

I'll look closely for ghost reflections, which I have seen when capturing Jupiter in widefield shots. That may help.

Cheers
Stuart

[dpastern]

It's probably one of the old ones messaging you and wanting you to be their servant. Probably Azathoth. ;-)

Dave

[bartman]

You mentioned something about a roof nearby; I recently got on the to of my place of work's roof and tried to take some shots of the Full Moon.
I rested the camera ( for a 1sec exp) on a ledge and the roof angles down from that ledge.
When I took the shots - no matter what FL or focusing- I got two ghost images.
I put it down to the reflection of the roof (tiles).
Maybe it was a piece of glass (or something like that ) that acted as a prism and reflected from the roof from a car or something like that.

My $0.02
Bartman:shrug:

[rat156]

Light only travels in straight lines (unless a mini black hole is near my place, have they turned the LHC back on yet?), so the car would have to be higher than the roofline. Haven't seen any DeLorean's about either, with or without flux capacitors.

C'mon there has to be a logical solution to this...

Cheers
Stuart

[wasyoungonce]

Its a Stargate (http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/File:PegasusWormhole.jpg)worm hole!:thumbsup:

Edit:

One thing I did note was that the green diffuse dot is elongated like an ellipse with the major axis pretty much in line with the centre of the camera lens.

Thus it's more likely a reflection artefact of stray light.

Meh..my 2cents worth.

[renormalised]

Maybe it was the "bugs from upstairs" <queue Twilight Zone theme>:P:D:D

Or, it's a real life episode from "The Outer Limits":P:D:D

Seriously, I still think it's a green laser...it fits the profile. Who knows what it was reflecting off, but that's what it looks like.

[sjastro]

It's probably nothing more but an intense cosmic ray hit.

The fact that there are no "squiggly lines" which is a characteristic of a cosmic ray hits indicates, the hit is perpendicular to the plane of the detector.

The intense white region is due to signal saturation which has flowed into adjacent pixels. The green colour of the adjacent area is due to the Bayer matrix, where 50% of a pixel is covered by the green filter that also acts the dominant or luminance filter.

I've had monster cosmic ray hits covering quite a few pixels when taking dark frames inside my fridge.

Regards

Steven

[renormalised]

That's also a possibility....you can never tell for sure what it may have been. Maybe we'll never know...just chalk this up to a lucky shot.

[DavidU]

I hadn't thought of that one.

[tlgerdes]

It's The Green Lantern returning to earth :lol:

[ngcles]

Hi Stuart & All,

Maybe, just maybe it is Nibiru?? :P:P

It does look very mono to me too and in colour, suspiciously like a green laser. But what did it reflect off? To be that bright in the image it would have to be close to the ground.

Probably too bright to be an internal reflection within the lens unless it came from an extremely bright light-source. Possible.

Cosmic Ray hit? It would have to be one mother of a particle that made it all the way through the atmosphere. Couldn't rule that out but very, very unlikely.

Could it be a head-on meteor? Meteors (particularly the big-uns) sometimes have a greenish hue because of either 1) Copper content and/or 2) ionisation of Oxygen (ie OIII) as they burn-up explode in the upper atmosphere.

The colour is about right (but probably a shade too light a green) for that but again, it looks awfully monochromatic and about mag -8 or -9 -- very, very bright.

GRB? For the optical afterglow to be that bright it would have to be pretty nearby and it'd be all over the scientific world today as the brightest GRB (in Gamma Rays) ever seen -- probably by several orders of magnitude. Swift would have picked it up. Can rule that one out I think.

I'd put the position approximately at RA 03 33 40 Dec -34 21 00. There are no even remotely close galaxies at that point. The closest Fornax member (excluding undiscovered ultra LSB dwarfs) is about 30 arcminutes away IC 335.

So what is it? Dunno -- but almost certainly has a mundane explanation.

Green laser is my bet at this stage as it is the "least unlikely".


Best,

Les D

[Lost In Space]

Definitely a strange picture.

It looks ALOT like a laser pointer to me (not ruling out other possible causes).

Here is a pic of a green laser I found:

http://www.mvktech.net/images/reviews/dlhulk/5mw_green_bg_1.jpg

A refraction perhaps? I'm not sure. The green light in the actual photo does seem to have a ringed pattern around it though.

My advice is to go out again one night and set everything up the same way it was when the photo was taken, position the telescope the same again, and see if you can find any explanations. :thumbsup:

[Moon]

I had to hack out the green bits to get it to plate solve.
http://live.astrometry.net/status.php?job=alpha-200910-83320316

Nice wide FOV (73 degrees)

Edit: Looking closely the image with annotations is distorted - eg canopus.:confused2:

[Screwdriverone]

Ahhh, not strictly true as intense gravity from galaxies can "bend" light from background galaxies a la gravitational lensing (Einstein's Cross) but, to be sure, this is over a looooooooooooooooooooooong distance...:P

You might be right though... it COULD be "the Libyans" looking for their missing plutonium....THAT was green??? eh? whatdya think?

Great Scott...........this is heavy!

Cheers

Chris

[rat156]

Maybe it's the celestial teapot!

email to Richard Dawkins on the way, I'm sure I'll get a response...


Cheers
Stuart

P.S. my bet is a signal for upon high to back "the Sportsman" on Saturday ( 31.10 & 7.80) $10 EW paid for the pergola I built on the weekend, woo hoo!

[Kal]

I'd have to go for cosmic ray. This page (http://www.eso.org/%7Eohainaut/images/imageProc.html) has a sample of cosmic rays on a CCD, and I can see some similarities with the pics on this (http://astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/aires/) page as well.

Our quiet sun is letting in more cosmic rays at the moment as well source (http://kendalastronomer.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/quiet-sun-lets-in-cosmic-rays/)

[bartman]

It could possibly be a Klingon Phaser / torpedo( they are green) that you might have captured like one of those in a Star Trek Time Warp Saving the Planet episodes..........NO DISRESPECTING THE STAR TREK COMMUNITY !

Seriously, you could be the first to capture -by accident- something like that.....

And to be honest, I believe something like this will or has happened....and we just haven't acknowledged that fact......no not a KWB but an alien "Hello we are here" kinda morse code laser light source do-hickey thing-a-ma-gig
Maybe......

So in other words you might be the first to pick up an alien ' hello ' Beacon!....

:ship2:
Bartman

[circumpolar]

My guess is a Cosmic Ray hit.



It happens all the time.


Nitpick.........
As a Surveyor in training I can tell you that all light bends when passing through any medium other then a vaccum. We use EDM's (Electromagnetic Distance Measure) all day long and whenever a long measurement is taken the curve in the light path must be taken into account.

[ngcles]

Hi Matt & All,



Yes of course it does -- no doubt about that.

I'm no expert on this sort of stuff by any means but look at the image again. If this is a hit, it has produced a flash in the CCD in the order of 100 to 1000 times brighter than Rigel in a 30 second exposure. Rigel is one of the brightest stars in the sky -- a "zeroith" magnitude star.

All the cosmic ray hits I've seen in images are very small comparable to faint or very faint stars. It would appear this one has produced a flash in the order of 20-25 (stellar) magnitudes brighter than your average cosmic ray hit -- which I'd reckon implies either an extremely energetic one ... or, invoking Occam's razor, more likely that it's not a cosmic ray hit.


Best,

Les D

[Kal]

From what I can research, the Highest Observed Cosmic Ray Energy is the Fly's Eye Event, about 320 EeV = 3 x 10^20 GeV. Considering CERN only accelerates lead nuclei to around 574Tev, this would be 6x10^15 more energetic than those nuclei!

[sjastro]

You're not comparing apples with apples. You are converting photons from Rigel into a signal. Cosmic rays on the other hand are mostly composed of protons.

You can't make direct comparisons on the basis of magnitudes.

Regards

Steven

[rat156]

I think we should move this thread to one of the more esoteric fundamental astronomy based fora.

I'm going for an electronics problem. I might post it to spaceweather to see if someone else has had something similar happen.

Cheers
Stuart

[DavidU]

Do that. You will get a bit more input that way.