Forums / The Science / Visual Observing / Strange observation
Strange observation
Hello fellow observers!
I was going through my regular campaign with my binoculars and I had just gotten to lambda Tauri. At 850p local time (350a Universal time) I was checking it against the comparison stars in the "V" of Taurus when I spied through the binoculars a line of faint (guestimated mag. between 5 and 6) objects moving fairly quickly directly through the "V". It went between the point of the "V", gam Tau, and the next two bright stars, del Tau and ups Tau. The line was about as long as the distance between those two stars. I followed it with the binoculars - it kept going, nearly passing in front of the Pleiades and then disappeared in the light pollution horizon below Algol.
Does anyone have any idea what this might have been? Perhaps a shattered meteor? A falling satellite? A gundam?
Thanks,
Chase
Hi Brian, and thanks for your reply! No, they didn't seem to speed up or get brighter. So it makes sense I guess for it to be a group of satellites. The only thing that got me was that it was a large number of objects (10-15) and they weren't /exactly/ in a line, it had a funny hook or angle on the leading edge. But still, that's cool.
Hi James, If the objects moved at a fairly steady speed you probably spotted a formation of satellites. Back when I lived in Nebraska I could spot 3-5 or more satellites in under an hour on a dark night. At one time I even had a cluster of 5 go through the FOV of an 8" Celestron I was using (that really startled me!). During our star shows for the public we would often have competitions to see who could spot the most satellites. I think at a maximum we got to 35 during our program (typically 3 hours in the winter) so if you look for them, you can find them. If the objects appeared to speed up and get suddenly brighter you probably spotted a meteor. Have a good night and keep looking for those goodies! Brian Edit: I forgot to mention this. You can check outhttp://www.heavens-above.com/for predictions for spacecraft. I think the professional edition of TheSky or perhaps Celestia has real-time satellite position information too, although it's not enabled by default.