{"id":355,"date":"2007-09-04T02:44:42","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T02:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perezmedia.net\/beltofvenus\/2007\/09\/04\/meteor_or_satel\/"},"modified":"2007-09-04T02:44:42","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T02:44:42","slug":"meteor_or_satel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perezmedia.net\/beltofvenus\/2007\/09\/04\/meteor_or_satel\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteor or Satellite?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After posting my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perezmedia.net\/beltofvenus\/archives\/000720.html\">observation of the Alpha Aurigid meteor shower<\/a> to the amastro yahoo group, a comment was raised about the photo I included in the report. A member of the list thought it was doubtful that the object in the photograph was a meteor. This was mainly due to the lack of tapered ends and the uniform brightness of the streak of light. His thought was that this was more likely to be a satellite trail that cut in and cut out at the beginning and end of the exposure (resulting in blunt tips on the trail). This is a reasonable objection. Honestly, I thought it was not a typical shape for a meteor light trail either. However, here is why I felt confident that it was a meteor despite its shape.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The trail seems fairly short (about 1.5 degrees long in this case) to be a satellite trail on a 30 second exposure.<\/i>\n<li>Each of the photos I took that morning was broken by a pause of only 3-5 seconds before the next shot was taken. I did not see a continuation of this trail of light on either the proceeding or following exposures. If the satellite&#8217;s progress was indeed cut off at the beginning and end of the exposure, it seems likely that it would have shown up on at least one of those other shots.<\/li>\n<li>The color change across the length of the streak is similar to a number of other meteor photos from that morning: blue-green at one end and red at the other. I&#8217;m not sure that a satellite streak would do that. But perhaps they do?<\/li>\n<li>I did in fact record a satellite trail on three of my exposures several minutes after this shot was taken. While this satellite capture did exhibit a uniform width and blunt ends, it didn&#8217;t follow these previous characteristics. Its trail was significantly longer. It was traceable across more than one exposure. And it didn&#8217;t exhibit a color shift across its length.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying this is proof of meteorship. But I did try to do my homework before publicizing it. A couple things I&#8217;m interested to pursue after considering this are: 1) Are there any other meteor photos that demonstrate blunt ends and uniform width, and 2) Was my noise processing partly to blame for the bluntness of the image?<\/p>\n<p>While I ponder and research this, here is the image in question with no noise processing:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.perezmedia.net\/beltofvenus\/archives\/images\/2007\/img2007090401_MeteorRaw.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m open to any comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meteor or Satellite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-satellite","category-meteor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":542,"url":"https:\/\/perezmedia.net\/beltofvenus\/2010\/09\/08\/2010_perseid_me\/","url_meta":{"origin":355,"position":0},"title":"2010 Perseid Meteor Shower","author":"jperez1690","date":"September 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sketch of 2010 Perseids Click image to view larger version. 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