The other night while visiting my in laws semi rural property on the outskirts of Melbourne, I took a few widefield shots by just sitting the camera on a fence post and aimed it at the night sky. I was using a 50mm lens on a DSLR and exposure was 8 secs, f2 @ 1600 iso.
Upon analysing the shots, I noticed these strange wavy trails in sections of the frame. Having taken the shots not long after twilight ended, I wondered if they could have been a flock of birds lit by the setting sun or insects, or space debris, or fragmenting meteors, or visiting aliens? They appear in several of the shots I took but only in the same section of the sky i.e. just above Orion.
Has anyone seen something similar to this before or knows what could have caused these random trails? I'd be interested in suggestions.
A very strange thing indeed, birds would give a consistent line I'd think. In the third pic the bottom line is a green colour at the end of the line.
Very interesting indeed Michael, thanks for sharing.
I'll preface this by admitting that I know virtually nothing about astrophotography, but some of the brighter stars appear to have star trails that are also slightly wobbly, so maybe something was causing the camera to shake slightly? Termites in your fence post? Minor earthquake?
Given that your stars are more or less stable, it is not camera movement. I would guess it's a micrometeorite swam. Very small stuff that might not register to the human eye but picked up burning in the upper atmo by your camera. I believe Earth might have been passing near the recent comets path and it could be residual dust.
Thanks for your input guys, I'm liking Glen's explanation, as although camera movement may have occurred being propped up on a fence post, the trails would show similar trajectory and perhaps be parallel to each other? Micro meteorite swarm. I'll have to Google that one!
It looks as though the trails/lines might be caused by something near the camera as the star trails in the images appear to be more elongated than the trails/lines themselves.
Perhaps those tiny little spiders that have webs that carry them through the air launched themselves from the other fence post and you are seeing them as the fly by.
Just another one to ponder and a very long shot at that.
I posted something about 6 months ago with unexplained goings on in the sky and got very little in the way of realistic possibilities and yet I didn't believe it was possible that I was the only one to have ever come across strange things given how many of us are photographing the sky.
Yours are stranger than mine although mine was a single object acting strange. The part that interests me with both yours and mine is that they are non linear as a plane, satellite or meteor would be. With both yours and mine, I discounted anything super close like a bug as we are at infinite focus and anything that close ( in my case though a 1250mm scope ) would if anything only appear as a faint shadow. In one of your long trails you can see brighter sections in the trails which are not eveny spaced as a flashing light from an aircraft would be. Yours are moving quite fast as they cover a large portion of your feild of veiw over 8 seconds. Mine took a total of nearly 8 minutes to go through my very small feild of view.
After such a lengthy post you'd think I'd have some sort of solution for you but I don't. I'm sure someone does though and I'm looking forward to seeing someone post who does.
Try to estimate their speed ...choose a height where we expect them to show up ...measue stuff in the photo match it to the exposure time...but I think if you have a shower that is something to be proud of and maybe of interest to some one studying trajectories. ... but if its spider webs it will be a whole different interest group.
Who can calculate their speed...there seems a pulse in the light that time unit would be nice to know...like if they afe travelling at 100,000 lkms per hour and flashing mesages to each other for the value of 22/7 ... well we need to know...it may be the first wave of "them" and you have caught them at it...sneaky when its dark.
I think they’re star trails from brighter stars. Maybe the brightness of the stars is changing up the length and intensity of the trails.
You can see the originating from the brightest stars. The others all originate from brights stars out of frame.
You're right there Gavin, they do appear to be originating from the brighter stars but they are not consistent. They vary in intensity along the trail and some stars which appear to be of similar magnitude don't have trails of equal intensity. It is probably an optical aberration caused by a cheap 50mm lens and the camera has either moved at the start or end of the exposure. Mind you, I did use the inbuilt 2 second shutter delay to minimize any movement, knowing this could be a problem.
At least it's created some discussion and a few of you scratching your heads. I don't want to scratch mine too hard as I may lose precious hair follicles I'm trying to retain!
I agree that they are star trails from the bright stars. The camera must have moved at some point during the exposure. They all seem to be parallel and start from the brighter stars.
Load tne image in photoshop or gimp or whatever you have and turn the brightness maybe even hue and saturation to see if you csn find trails on lesser stars...I still think it is the first wave☺
Alex
Load tne image in photoshop or gimp or whatever you have and turn the brightness maybe even hue and saturation to see if you csn find trails on lesser stars...I still think it is the first wave☺
Alex
Not star trails over 8sec, Meteor lines would be straight and dissapear. With camera wobble the stars would be little squiggles. Probably insects. Or wobbly
ICBM from Korea.
If you look carefully at the point of origin of all the trails, they all follow the same trajectory. All parallel in their trajectory. There are two terminal lines in your first photo. I've marked them in white circles as A & B. They both follow the exact same wavy pattern. Meteors will not make two parallel wavy patterns, nor a curved trajectory. The origin and end point of the trails says it all, with the huge number of trails all following the same trajectory. Meteors do not do this, especially the same wiggly pattern at the end of their path. No spiderlings, no bugs either. Not ET as well.
Note especially in circle B that the trail ends at a star. Also, just to the right of box 2 there is another bright star, and it too has a trail coming off it. Most of the brighter stars do.
The origin of these would be one of two: 1, the mount hadn't stopped moving, slewing, when the shot was started; 2, there is a tracking error. Most likely the first. As for the variations in "exposure" of the trails, that's an artefact of the camera dealing with the movement of the points of light. Note also if you look carefully at the brighter stars, they are no sharp, but appear to display a vibratory shape, a shudder, as the mount stopped in its movement. An 8 second exposure is plenty to show this.
I see these all the time with my own video astronomy as I slew and recenter an object, including the variations in illumination of the stars. You need to wait until the mount has totally stopped slewing before you start an exposure. Some mounts beep when they've stopped slewing, others don't. It used to annoy me this beep... now it annoys me NOT to hear it!
Alex.
Last edited by mental4astro; 30-12-2018 at 10:19 AM.
If you look carefully at the point of origin of all the trails, they all follow the same trajectory. All parallel in their trajectory. There are two terminal lines in your first photo. I've marked them in white circles as A & B. They both follow the exact same wavy pattern. Meteors will not make two parallel wavy patterns, nor a curved trajectory. The origin and end point of the trails says it all, with the huge number of trails all following the same trajectory. Meteors do not do this, especially the same wiggly pattern at the end of their path. No spiderlings, no bugs either. Not ET as well.
Note especially in circle B that the trail ends at a star. Also, just to the right of box 2 there is another bright star, and it too has a trail coming off it. Most of the brighter stars do.
The origin of these would be one of two: 1, the mount hadn't stopped moving, slewing, when the shot was started; 2, there is a tracking error. Most likely the first. As for the variations in "exposure" of the trails, that's an artefact of the camera dealing with the movement of the points of light. Note also if you look carefully at the brighter stars, they are no sharp, but appear to display a vibratory shape, a shudder, as the mount stopped in its movement. An 8 second exposure is plenty to show this.
I see these all the time with my own video astronomy as I slew and recenter an object, including the variations in illumination of the stars. You need to wait until the mount has totally stopped slewing before you start an exposure. Some mounts beep when they've stopped slewing, others don't. It used to annoy me this beep... now it annoys me NOT to hear it!
Alex.
I've never been a fan of the tracking ability or the slew speed of fence posts
