Odd Object Last Night

[bkm2304 (Richard Brown)]

Hi All,

Last night I was outside with my camera hoping to catch some pictures of meteors. After a sequence of 134 pictures I went inside and was puzzled by what my camera had caught.


The object has 3 parts: a central core, a small halo and then a larger halo that measures about 1.5 degrees - 3 moon diameters.

I think it may be a venting rocket or similar. It "turns" as it crosses the sky in a way similar to watching the ISS as it approaches and recedes.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Details

Pic 1-5 taken at 9:15, 9:17, 9:32, 9:51 and 9:56PM AEST respectively.

The images are crops of a larger field. The bright star top right is Canopus.

First Pic; RA = 6:00, DEC = -62.5
Last Pic; RA = 7:45, DEC = -62.8

Velocity = Approx 18 Deg/Hour, bearing 100 deg E by SSE

Camera: Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 35mm F1.8. 20 Secs @ 8,000 ISO.

Pics are here.

[h0ughy (David)]

COOL CAPTURE

trying to work through the images its probably a satellite venting gas/fuel......buuuuttttt i cant find a satellite moving in that area

[h0ughy (David)]

looked at your first image and processed that through astrometry.net


might help looking into it a bit?

[bkm2304 (Richard Brown)]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

COOL CAPTURE

trying to work through the images its probably a satellite venting gas/fuel......buuuuttttt i cant find a satellite moving in that area

Yes Dave, it certainly looks like venting or similar. It's speed suggests also that it was a long way up, orbiting about once every 20 hours. Perhaps someone smarter than me can calculate its height and it may help to figure out what it is?

Richard.

[h0ughy (David)]

this is the sky i have for that time. now there is a comet that is close but it must have brightened somewhat and travelled a different path

[deanm (Dean)]

I'll agree with the spacecraft venting suggestion: back in 2011, I saw shuttle Atlantis on it's last-ever orbit pass over Adelaide, chasing the ISS from which it had just undocked and completed a mutual-inspection 'fly-around'.

Exhaust from the shuttle's RCS maneuvering jets surrounded the ISS (you can see this is they pass behind a convenient 'sucker hole').

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeb2ix6HdpA

30 minutes later, the shuttle had de-orbited and landed in the US for the last time.

Gob-smacked would put it mildly!

Dean

[doppler (Rick)]

Great captures Richard and Dean,

I saw 2 bright satellites travelling in formation back in 2001, looked really cool. Turned out that it was the Mir spacestation and the progress rocket sent up to deorbit the space station.

[GrahamDuncan]

I don't believe it's venting,they would only do that for a de-orbit if their is any fuel left,fuel is way to precious, it's the holy grail of spaceflight,and we would know of a bird coming down.