My wife (Mel) and son (Rhys) were driving home from school, when Rhys saw something in the sky. They pulled over, and watched it. Rhys took the large image on his mobile phone and I have cut the zoomed images in Photoshop. There has been no enhancement to any images; just straight from his phone.
The date and time of the shot was 5th Mar 2009, 3.45pm.
I’m an aerospace engineer and new amateur astronomer. However, I’ve been trying to work out this one out, but, Rhys and Mel’s accounts just don’t marry-up with what I would expect. Here’s why;
Both say that it was moving very slowly, as slow as a commercial airliner at high altitude. Rhys and Mel both agree that it would have taken at least 5min to traverse from horizon to horizon (tree-top to tree-top in the park actually). They had plenty of time to park, get out, have a look and take a picture.
The time taken for an object to traverse H to H (200-300km??) would give a velocity of equal to or less than 1km/sec. Surely an object slowly converging with earth, with a comparable velocity, would still gain a large velocity due to gravitational acceleration.
The shot was taken in bright daylight, with the sun just off to the high right. If we can’t see shooting stars during the day because the background sky is too bright, then this thing would have been huge to give off so much light at such a slow speed.
A comet would traverse the sky much the same as a planet; A little faster or slower than star constellations, but way slower than 5min across the sky.
The tail is wide, and not like re-entering space debris. Not 26,000 kph objects.
There is no long streaking tail of smoke behind.
Mel saw another one 3 days later, but this time from our balcony at home.
I saw something very similar a few weeks ago, what I saw was definitely a high altitude plane, looked black(probably green) so likely to be military, and was moving fast.
Possible space debris? Definately not a comet - tail facing wrong direction - towards the Sun.
That's what I said to Mel and Rhys - it just doesn't add up.
Also, a Boosters stage would account for the east to west direction, and I would have believed that in a second, but Rhys's account was very accurate.
Although Rhys is only 15, he's been reading my manuscript, part of which describes general relativity and geodesics, so he immediately realised there was something weird.
The plane I saw had 4 engines, forming a very short but broad trail, just like the one pictured.
It took a while to work that out as the vapour from each engine blended a very short distance from the aircraft.
It moved from northwest to southeast. It is the only time I have ever witnessed a daytime con-trail over Perth.
Mark, I see you're into RC thermal, where do you fly?
I used to hang around the KAMS Mundijong field years ago to watch the turbines, never did join tho as I was into the little speed400 park-fliers at the time. Kinda lost interest lately.
I would say a plane contrail too, however, see if you can get the attention of Peter Ward via PM to take a look and see if he can offer an opinion. I understand he is an airline pilot and probably has seen it all before.
I would say with confidence that it is aircraft contrails, having seen exactly what you describe quite a few times over the years
I keep a pair of Bino's with me everywhere I go for just such occasions
