(Maybe) Supernova found

[LordFerret]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

Damaged pixel?

No. There is a round/spherical point light source, more than one pixel, and flare from it.

Download the image. View it in Gimp (or whatever), and analyze the image elements. You'll see it.

[adsii1970]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Damaged pixel?

P.S.
I meant a texture glitch in our _{flat earth} skybox...

wait, you mean somewhere out there, there's a kid playing Human Space Program and we're all a simulation?

 

[Just Jim]

Just now, adsii1970 said:

wait, you mean somewhere out there, there's a kid playing Human Space Program and we're all a simulation?

 

I'm sorry... that information is classified and NDA... 

[Wjolcz]

Given the shape I'd say it's Venus. But the position almost in zenith is not right. Unless it was around noon but it wouldn't be visible at all.

[JetJaguar]

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

wait, you mean somewhere out there, there's a kid playing Human Space Program and we're all a simulation?

 

I knew it!  I've always suspected that somewhere in the Universe, there are little green aliens playing a game called "Human Space Program", and they go on their messageboards and complain about the underpowered reaction wheels and the unrealistic progression of starting with airplanes before moving on to rockets.

Edited April 20, 2018 by JetJaguar

[Scotius]

And that pesky stock Life Support systems requirements hardcoded into any manned mission...

[DAL59]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

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.

?

Your saying the light from the moon reflected off a mirror in space onto a cloud?????????????

I believe you, but I'm more than slightly skeptical.  

[Lisias]

Can be coincidence, but this thing got caught flying in the skies of a city here at Brazil yesterday.

Source (Brazilian Portuguese);

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Can be coincidence, but this thing got caught flying in the skies of a city here at Brazil yesterday.

Source (Brazilian Portuguese);

that's pretty clearly just an airliner or transport jet flying at an altitude where the rising or setting sun is shining on its underside, and the bottom of the contrail.

The OP object is most likely an Iridium flare.  These look like a point source light, which will expand into a circle if the lens is out of focus (which it virtually always is, if you apply enough magnification to the image).  They're brilliant enough to see against a twilight sky with ease, and last a couple minutes.  They're produced only by the "old model" Iridium sat-phone satellites; the Iridium Next have a different arrangement of solar panels and don't cast a reflection to Earth in  a way that's visible as a flare.  The satellites are in polar orbits (for continuous global coverage), so can appear near the zenith or even in the northern sky, depending on date and solar angle.

There's a web page around somewhere that gives exact scheduling of visible Iridium flares -- input your location, and it'll tell when flare will be (or, I presume, have been) visible from your location.  It's kept up to date by the company that owns the satellites, so won't show flares from older satellites that have been deorbited or moved into "reserve" orbits.

[Nightfury]

Sounds like it was a iridium flare. Problem again, it was not moving, and lasted minutes.

Btw pretty nice how many reply's got here

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, Nightfury said:

Problem again, it was not moving, and lasted minutes.

Another option is some GEO/GSO.

Or those weird ones that goes stationary over an area for some time.

[KG3]

It almost sounds like the landing lights on an airplane.  If you are along the approach to an airport and you have an aircraft flying towards you while decreasing it's altitude the light at the nose of the plane can seem to hang motionless in the sky for quite a while.  Even small aircraft have very bright lights.  I've been fooled by this before.

  However 85 degrees above the horizon would put this thing almost directly over head, wouldn't it?  

[Nightfury]

21 minutes ago, KG3 said:

However 85 degrees above the horizon would put this thing almost directly over head, wouldn't it?

Yep, and in the northern part of Germany, it's ~ 52° above the equator (when in orbit)

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 hour ago, Nightfury said:

Yep, and in the northern part of Germany, it's ~ 52° above the equator (when in orbit)

That's close to the standard inclination of a tundra orbit -- as I recall, they run at 63.5 degrees to avoid destabilization by Earth's equatorial bulge, with a 24-hour period.  That's done so they stay near-stationary in the sky for a period of some hours near apogee.  These orbits have been used for comsats over Siberia and other high-latitude markets, usually with three satellites deployed so there's continuous service (otherwise, a single satellite will be within the lobe of a fixed antenna for only several hours of each day).

Your 85 degrees above horizon might be anywhere between 47 and 57 degrees declination, depending on direction of displacement from the zenith, which is about where you might see a tundra orbit comsat when it's a little off its apogee (but likely still in the service dwell zone).  Such a satellite would move only several degrees per hour when in its dwell region, so would seem fixed over a three minute sighting.

You're right, an Iridium flare would seem to move several degrees over a span of three minutes, though that's hard to detect near the zenith without references (stars, which weren't visible at the time of your sighting, or fixed objects like buildings, or a telescope or camera on a steady mount).

Another slight possibility -- seems to me a recent Mars mission was launched from Vandenberg, which would give a polar parking orbit before insertion to the trans-Mars trajectory.  Apparently this is done because of launch cadence limitations, and the slight dV penalty is preferable over having to push the launch back, potentially out of the Mars window.

[Nightfury]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

*snap*

ok, that would explain alot. But there is one last thing unclear to me: when it's at it's apogee, and illuminated, how does it not reflect light anymore after this three minutes? At this hight there should be enough light...

[Scotius]

Maybe it rotated just a bit, and reflective surface no longer bounced the light towards your eyes? It's the simplest solution.

[Nightfury]

1 minute ago, Scotius said:

Maybe it rotated just a bit, and reflective surface no longer bounced the light towards your eyes? It's the simplest solution.

probably this. The normal surface reflections shouldn't be bright enough in 37k km

wow, thanks for putting it clear guys

and I know more about supernovas , nice

[YNM]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

tundra orbit

Yeah, I call this one.

Though if that's the case, won't there be a near-permanent glint over Japan ? XD

[sevenperforce]

22 hours ago, DAL59 said:

?

Your saying the light from the moon reflected off a mirror in space onto a cloud?????????????

I believe you, but I'm more than slightly skeptical.  

I know, right?

It was hard to believe, but that was the only explanation. I think I posted about it somewhere...not sure if it was this forum.

Ah, here it is.

Tracked down which rocket body it was, even.

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Yeah, I call this one.

Though if that's the case, won't there be a near-permanent glint over Japan ? XD

There will be, but it won't be visible from Japan.  In fact, given the solar panels are either fixed to the satellite frame or track the sun,  you'll tend to get either no glint at all (in the latter case) or momentary glints far from the service area as the spacecraft continuously reorients (presumably using reaction wheels) to keep the antenna pointed at the correct part of the Earth.  The geometry of reflection is such that you'd need to design the spacecraft specifically to put the glint where the signal is going; normally it'll be cast far away, likely even missing the Earth entirely most of the time.

[DAL59]