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(Maybe) Supernova found

Nightfury

By Nightfury
in Science & Spaceflight

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Nightfury

Nightfury

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Hey Guys

Yesterday evening( ~8:30pm local) I was photographing the Moon and sunset, when some bright spot apeared roughly 85° above the horizon. It was the first star to see, but suddenly (after 3 minutes of appearence) it fainted and then disappeared. There were some dots after dissapearence, which left after a few seconds too.

Now my questions are:

Is it possible that this was indeed a Supernova (it was even brighter than the moon), with some lighted gas from the Star

or was it a meteor coming in completely straight? (would not be a good explanation, because of the relative long visible time)

I know that the probability of such an event inside the milky way is like 20 +- 8 per millennium, but there is one:rolleyes:

It could be something completly different, but I can't imagine a thing at the time.

A picture of the dot:

Spoiler

Xq3VxFs.jpg

 

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Hannu2

Hannu2

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I guess that it was some kind of flying machine (plane or helicopter, not extraterrestrial spaceship). Supernovas (and other rapidly variable stars) are slower phenomena. Supernova's brightness increases days and dimming takes several weeks.

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Nightfury

Nightfury

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35 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

I guess that it was some kind of flying machine (plane or helicopter, not extraterrestrial spaceship). Supernovas (and other rapidly variable stars) are slower phenomena. Supernova's brightness increases days and dimming takes several weeks.

Yeah that's true. The problem with a plane or so is, this thing doesn't moved a single bit. I thougt of it in the first moments, but it stayed at the same place all the time

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NSEP

NSEP

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I think its nothing more than the reflection of a hot air balloon or maybe a helicopter, wich tend to hang in the sky for a while. If it was a supernova, it would have been world news, a few minutes, if not, hours after it first appeared, but i found no sources of supernova's happending a few hours ago.

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Nightfury

Nightfury

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6 minutes ago, NSEP said:

wich tend to hang in the sky for a while

Hot air ballon, well not very likely in my area, but would explain the stuff afterwards. Helikopter, yeah. As you can see on the picture there was no special shape and you would hear it. Furthermore they don't fly that high...

Not trying to deny anything, sounds just unlikely (As a Supernova). Would need to be something else I think

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NSEP

NSEP

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Was it moving with the sun or was it standing completely still, if it was standing completely still? If it wasn't moving with the sun, its probably not coming from space.

There is a slight possibility it could be Venus.

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Nightfury

Nightfury

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8 minutes ago, NSEP said:

There is a slight possibility it could be Venus.

Venus was between the sun and the Moon at this time

Spoiler

JZhKJNt.jpg

Not (good) visible, but meeh

I can't remember correctly, but I think it was moving with the sun.

Edited by Nightfury
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Scotius

Scotius

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It's also possible you've experienced meteorological phenomenon akin to fatamorgana. Or atmospheric lensing that caused a star or planet (it does look like Venus) to briefly appear much brighter that it normally is. Supernova or Nova would take much more time to reach full brightness, and then it would stay clearly visible for days and weeks.

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Scotius

Scotius

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Nope. Too far. Usually atmospheric refraction or reflection causes obiects to appear higher, lower, shifted to the sides or inverted. But not by that much. Maybe it was a meteor or piece of space junk? If it was sizeable and was coming straight in your direction it would appear like immobile blob of light? Maybe? I've never seen something like this personally. Just throwing wild guesses at this point :)

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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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16 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Could also be bright sunlight reflecting off something in orbit, such as the ISS or large communications satellite.

Could be a chance alignment of light off a stationary comsat.

EDIT: Change alignments of light can do crazy things. I once saw the image of the moon literally projected onto a low, diffuse cloud bank, larger than life, 180 degrees opposite the actual location of the moon. Only, the projected image was moving. Turns out it was a shiny rocket stage from an old US launch passing at perigee, and it just happened to be lined up so that the image of the moon was flipped and showed up in the clouds above my head. The projection became smaller and smaller until it met with the actual spot of light that was the rocket body itself.

Edited by sevenperforce
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Wjolcz

Wjolcz

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Might have been a plane. I saw something like this yesterday (or maybe two days ago). The light was very bright and it wasn't moving at all. Then it dimmed and started flashing just like a plane. Given the right conditions it's possible that you saw it reflect light but didn't see the flashes because the sky was still too bright.

Either that or space debris. But space debris definitely moves. You would clearly see it move across the sky during the 3 minutes period.

Edit: About a year or two ago I also saw a bright flash very close to the Sun in the middle of the day. It was short but I'm pretty sure it was a plane reflecting light.

Edited by Wjolcz
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sevenperforce

sevenperforce

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16 minutes ago, Nightfury said:

Trying it now.

But here are the information:

Lat 52.6

Lon 10.3

UTC + 2 (Summer time) UTC + 1 (Standart Time)

EDIT: Only after 9pm, the sighting was 8:30pm, so a bit off

How's Germany this time of year?

Unfortunately Heavens-Above doesn't really calculate during the day, so a sunset case like this just doesn't show up because passes start later.

Here's a list of all Molnya sats -- if you plug each of them into Heavens-Above individually, you can chart whether any of them passed overhead with the "all passes" option:

https://www.n2yo.com/satellites/?c=14

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LordFerret

LordFerret

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2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Texture glitch.

Having examined it in Gimp, I would not call it a texture glitch.

 

3 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Could also be bright sunlight reflecting off something in orbit, such as the ISS or large communications satellite.

I would go with that ^. The likes of an Iridium flare.

The only other thing not suggested is a sundog, but the location / angle is all off for something like that.

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