![]() ...
·
![]() |
---|
My gut feeling is that this is a laser. It looks like a laser diffraction and that satellite did measure albedo and reflectiveness on Earth. It was constantly pointed at Earth and seems it's also still operational. I think this was a test firing of the laser, some kind of calibration maybe? It's a 15 second exposure and the satellite isn't that high up (900km) so it had to be quite a short pulse, or it would be elongated. I feel that a pure copper meteorite, coming straight down at conventiently the same time as this satellite passed overhead is quite unlikely. |
![]() ...
·
![]()
·
2
likes
|
---|
Nooa Jutila: Marx Fox did a quick calculation in this thread that the laser would have a beam diameter of about 30m on the ground and it is pointed straight down. At 900km that would mean that the line of sight would change by about 0.24 arcsec during a pass over the camera. I guess that would not create a visible elongation on an all sky camera. Funfact: At orbital velocity it would take about 4ms to travel 30m across the camera. So it was indeed a short pulse, even if it would be a cw-laser. |
![]() ...
·
![]()
·
1
like
|
---|
If you go to the Satelites Wikipedia Page, you can see that It actually has a Laser to measure pollution in the earths atmosphere and to communicate to the ground. Awesome catch! I'm suprised that they use visual light for that. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daqi_1 |