Plane, satellite or shooting star?

[thegableguy (Chris)]

Can someone help me identify this? I was doing some widefield long exposures in my backyard last night and one of the frames had this. I was inside when it happened so didn't see it.

I'm guessing it's not a plane because there's no strobes or different colours; also the main yellow line stops and the green one continues. Bit weird. It's going more or less due east/west; the top of the image is NW which makes me think it can't be a satellite catching the sun's reflection; if it's going from bottom to top it stops shining as it gets closer to the sun.

So, any ideas?

[Atmos (Colin)]

All that comes to mind for me is someone shining a green laser at a plane :/

[RB (Andrew)]

It's a plane's wingtip lights.
Not a green laser, it's running perfectly parallel with the plane, fading as it recedes.

[astroron (Ron)]

Basically what you are seeing is the landing lights of the aircraft,which have over whelmed the strobe lights,the green is probably just one of the wing tip lights..
Just the angle you are seeing it at.
Cheers

[RB (Andrew)]

Yes, I should have mentioned the landing lights too, Ron is correct.

RB

[thegableguy (Chris)]

Ah! Landing lights coming on just as the plane goes over land. Makes a lot of sense. Mystery solved, thank you!

[deanm (Dean)]

How close is your nearest airport/airstrip and does the direction to it match your location?

Dean

[RobF (Rob)]

Originally Posted by thegableguy

Ah! Landing lights coming on just as the plane goes over land. Makes a lot of sense. Mystery solved, thank you!

At the risk of being corrected by any of the airline pilots on our forum, I think normal procedure for transport aircraft is to turn on landing lights descending through 10,000 ft.

[RB (Andrew)]

I've seen various sized aircraft turn on their landing lights just as they're coming into Sydney as I'm driving up the freeway.

RB