Hello everyone Two nights ago (August 28-29), my all-sky cam (ASI 224MC, 15 seconds exposure per image) captured an interesting phenomenon at 3:30:47 CEST. The artifact is not visible on the previous (below) and the following image.   My initial thought was that this was a satellite using a green laser. There are indeed satellites that use green lasers, such as ICESat-2, but none of them seem to have been near the zenith at the time. I downloaded the current satellite list for my location from CdC and could find one satellite that matches the time and location: Hiyang-1B at 3:30:55, however it does not appear to be using a laser.  Does anyone have any other ideas or resources to identify the phenomenon? /Ralf
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No clue but thanks for posting, it's interesting.
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That is absolutely bizarre! I was starting to think 'incoming meteor' headed right at you, but there seems to be a diffraction pattern that is typical of laser light (single wavelength). There are a lot of solid-state lasers in the green range capable of producing tens of watts (medical applications) and no doubt orders of magnitudes greater power for industrial/military application. I'm thinking laser source.
Good luck with your investigation!
Mark
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Le dot to know like everybody.
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maybe some crazy dude suddenly celebrated with one green firework
if it was a laser, wouldn't it wash out the whole sky in the image, or a much larger part of it? assuming the sensor on this cam is small.
EDIT: the sensor is kinda small
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Lasers are not perfect beams. Although they seem nice and tight as viewed across a room, the beam will have divergence. With a distance of a couple hundred miles or more, it wouldn't surprise me that the beam could be meters across in diameter, perhaps much larger than that.
Maybe it's a measurement device. Lasers would be very precise to use reflectance of the beam, measuring timing/interference patterns received at the satellite's sensor. Could be mapping the terrain - geological function…. or a more nefarious reason.
EDIT. My point being that the beam intensity as seen by the sensor would definitely be highly attenuated. It's just a really bright star.
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Mark Fox:
It's just a really bright star. it's not look at the original post, one frame has it, the other doesn't maybe a meteor was headed straight for the cam, then burnt up
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Oops, I should have been more detailed with that last sentence, messierman3000. My bad. What I meant to say was that the laser would be diffuse enough, after hundreds of miles of travel, to just appear [and very briefly] as a very bright star. I still subscribe primarily to the laser theory, meteor a not-so-distant second probability. Just have to analyze those spikes - monochromatic laser diffraction or meteor disintegration? Looking forward to hearing more info on this.
I did a quick calculation, for whatever it is worth. A green laser in the 500 nm wavelength range (for ease of calculation), let's say from a laser with a beam 1cm in diameter at its source, would have a divergence that will make it 30 meters in diameter from about 1500 km away (wasn't the distance of that Chinese satellite in the 900 mile range?). That's the theoretical calculation for a perfect beam.
I hope you all have clear skies this weekend - here in Utah I will only have to deal with a little smoke but will certainly be imaging in B7 urban area.
Mark
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...can I change my vote? I am going with disintegrating meteor. I took a closer look at the flaring outward from the source. I really don't see anything with regular spacing like a diffraction pattern. And I also see a couple of those flares ending in a bright blob. @FlapAstro .... I think you caught a meteor... fortunately, not literally caught. VERY cool!
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I dunno… A head-on meteor made of copper entering the atmosphere? If it were more yellow, I'd ask if you are near an observatory. A lot of active optic systems for large telescopes need an artificial star, which is created by shining a UV laser into the atmosphere to excite a layer of sodium high in the atmosphere. Are you in Albuquerque? They do that stuff out at Star Fire on the Sandia range all the time. It could also be some experiment or measurement being done by satellite. Lot's of possibilities.
John
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To me it looks like a neighbor shining a laser pointer at the sky cam? It seems way to bright and blown out at core to be from outer space.
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Coolhandjo:
To me it looks like a neighbor shining a laser pointer at the sky cam? It seems way to bright and blown out at core to be from outer space. was the neighbor Superman?  |
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Do you live near high-rise apartments?
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Do you live near high rise?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jGB1AIotvMI think the theory of a satellite is the most realistic one. Looks too artificial, to be a meteor strike.
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Hello everyone Thanks for all the contributions so far. Just to answer some of the questions above: I live in a semi-rural area in Switzerland, with no high-rise buildings nearby. Nightlife is limited to animals and although my neighbors have teenagers, I don't think they would be playing with a laser at 3:30am on a weekday. To my knowledge, there is no professional observatory within a 20-30 km radius. However, I live near a major flight path, but after checking Flightradar24 for the time in question, there was no aircraft nearby. One more thing: the all-sky-cam has a clear plexi dome, which might make the light source look like it has a radial pattern and/or create some reflections. /Ralf  |
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There is obviously a chinese satellite which also does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PMiND4YwCan you look up the position of Daqi-1/AEMS at that time? If it does not show up, maybe the database is outdated or no complete. To me it actually looks pretty much like a laser and how they look like when I get them on camera at work.
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FlapAstro:
Hello everyone
Thanks for all the contributions so far. Just to answer some of the questions above: I live in a semi-rural area in Switzerland, with no high-rise buildings nearby. Nightlife is limited to animals and although my neighbors have teenagers, I don't think they would be playing with a laser at 3:30am on a weekday.
To my knowledge, there is no professional observatory within a 20-30 km radius.
However, I live near a major flight path, but after checking Flightradar24 for the time in question, there was no aircraft nearby.
One more thing: the all-sky-cam has a clear plexi dome, which might make the light source look like it has a radial pattern and/or create some reflections.
/Ralf
Is this the Raspberry Pi HQ camera?? If so how do you find it's performance?? I've seen a lot of negative reviews about it and I'm looking at building an All-Sky camera for fun
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@Sam Badcock no it’s an Zwo Asi 224MC and an Intel NUC /Ralf
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@Lumpi3000 I think you nailed it. I had dismissed it at first, as it was passing into earth’s shadow, but as it is actively emitting light that would be irrelevant. /Ralf  |
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That sounds like the mystery is solved.  I guess there are not too many people out there who caught a space laser on camera. That is really cool.
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Just a test of god's rods as other posters surely must have mentioned? |
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There are som thin green streaks radiating away from it, in a way that does suggest you recorded a meteor head-on.
I've photographed a green laser at night from 10km away and it didn't look like that.
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if it was a laser, wouldn't it wash out the whole sky in the image, or a much larger part of it? assuming the sensor on this cam is small.
EDIT: the sensor is kinda small Even though a laser beam diverges over that distance, it should still be imaged as a small spot on the sensor due to the optics in front of the camera. Similarly, the light from a star is a plane wave, which is much broader than the laser beam, yet still focuses to a point (or close to). I go for the laser  |
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