k_kwb
Andromeda, Perseid Meteor and a Mystery Satellite
(Update: Mystery solved, the satellite was CSO 1, a French military imaging satellite. Thanks ehrwien for pointing me toward Stellarium!)
Colorful and bright Perseid meteor traveled "up" from the bottom left of the frame, and much later a mystery satellite crossed right in the middle of Andromeda.
I don't know what this satellite was, maybe it's one of SpaceX's starlink sats? It went across the entire frame from left to right starting at around 2:54 AM Pacific DST on Aug/15 2020, but the leftmost part was cut because it was between two frames.
Interesting that the color of the meteor changed during the flight, greenish at first and later turning into orange. This is real, it's there in a single frame before any post-processing.
Shot from my heavily light-polluted back yard. Total exposure 1150 sec, each either 30 or 40 sec at ISO3200. I first made a stack of 1150 sec using sequator, loaded it in photoshop, then loaded two individual frames containing meteor and satellite, respectively, as separate layers, used visibility mask to only blend the trajectory into the stack.
BTW no tracking mount was used, this was all done on a weeny travel tripod, fine tracking was all done by the camera (Astrotracer to move the sensor), and a rough "tracking" was done manually each 10 minutes or so by moving the ballhead.
Andromeda, Perseid Meteor and a Mystery Satellite
(Update: Mystery solved, the satellite was CSO 1, a French military imaging satellite. Thanks ehrwien for pointing me toward Stellarium!)
Colorful and bright Perseid meteor traveled "up" from the bottom left of the frame, and much later a mystery satellite crossed right in the middle of Andromeda.
I don't know what this satellite was, maybe it's one of SpaceX's starlink sats? It went across the entire frame from left to right starting at around 2:54 AM Pacific DST on Aug/15 2020, but the leftmost part was cut because it was between two frames.
Interesting that the color of the meteor changed during the flight, greenish at first and later turning into orange. This is real, it's there in a single frame before any post-processing.
Shot from my heavily light-polluted back yard. Total exposure 1150 sec, each either 30 or 40 sec at ISO3200. I first made a stack of 1150 sec using sequator, loaded it in photoshop, then loaded two individual frames containing meteor and satellite, respectively, as separate layers, used visibility mask to only blend the trajectory into the stack.
BTW no tracking mount was used, this was all done on a weeny travel tripod, fine tracking was all done by the camera (Astrotracer to move the sensor), and a rough "tracking" was done manually each 10 minutes or so by moving the ballhead.