8.10.13

Like a snail


Not very spectacular and difficult to spot this faint object was traveling extremely slowly. It was visible on every one of a sequence of 116 frames (each a 40 second exposure). The first of which was taken at 21.37.59 the last taken at 23.00.20.  Its direction of travel was more than 45 degrees to the sidereal motion of the stars so not very geostationary.
The Andromeda Galaxy is prominent at the top of these images.

Lens 40mm. 40 second exposures

2 comments:

  1. Pete, I think the best bet is a Molniya type satellite. Russia uses them for TV. They come as close as 800K and out to sometimes 40000k, spending a long time overhead at 63deg latitude. Apparently that works better than geosats which are normally above the equator - too low for Moscow.

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  2. Thanks John....that looks a likely solution. Will be interesting to see if a similar target shows up again.
    Pete

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