I was imaging remotely at a dark site about 30 minutes from my house. When I started processing the results, I noticed a single frame that had the strangest pattern that I can't quite figure out. The target is the Iris Nebula, and just about at the center of the frame there are star trails in concentric circles that almost look like the shot was taken at the pole. Except... it's obviously not the pole, and there are other weird things going on like what looks to be a plane or satellite coming into the frame and then curving with the other trails. There's also some curves, like in the top left, that don't seem to be on the same circular plane as the central trails. There's also what clearly looks like a standard satellite bombing through in a strait line on the left. Here's the single 180" shot with the trails, neither of the subs on either side of this sub had any aberrations:
I also have an all-sky camera set up at my house that captured what surely must be an airplane circling overhead about 4 hours before the above photo was taken. Here's a video of that. Forgive the trees, I live in a literal forest:
allsky-20220901.mov
I removed this sub when I processed the final image from that night, but eventually I couldn't help myself and added the "UFO" photobomb into the final result:
Any thoughts on what this is? I wasn't anywhere near an airport, but it's got to be a plane circling, right? But if you look closely at the first photos, there are TONS of circular trails... all within just 180 seconds.Thanks for looking, and CS!
-Kelly
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