Bright UFO

[Baurice]

To the unaided eye, this appeared as a bright comet nucleus or galaxy, then it started to move!. Because I was unable to change the settings before I lost it, so I was stuck with 18mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 6 seconds exposure. I caught two images and both appeared as a bright, blue smudge.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Phillip

It is out of focus. I can tell by looking at the stars, you can see the stars are out of focus.

With lack of focus, lack of detail, it could be many things.

Here are three possibilities:-
1) Lens flare from a light that is just out of field of view.
2) small cloud lit by end of day scattered sunlight or light pollution
3) There was a Starlink launch on April 29. This might be outgassing from one of the booster stages?
4) You were looking through a wormhole to the southern hemisphere and that's the Large Magellanic Cloud

Sorry I can't be more specific

Cheers
Joe

[Baurice]

Unfortunately, the photo only conveys a hint of what it looked like visually. I was outside to reset my intervalometer to take another 399 images and the camera was set at 18mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 6 seconds exposure, not what I would have chosen, It was only when I saw it move that I knew I would not get time to adjust my camera settings, let alone change lenses.

Because of its position, the original shots show some neighbours' houses, so I cropped them out. The stars appeared in focus with the full frame but I often find that if I zoom in on widefield views, I find the focus is not quite as good as I thought it was.

Had I known it was going to be there, I would have used a different lens as well as settings. The good news is that the session threw up a lot of interesting images, such as a smaller UFO (or is it 2) and meteors. See April 29th in my full report:

[pakarinen]

I like your format. Gotta say the hockey stick is pretty weird looking.

[Groovy2]

the L thing
few months ago similar in photo 2 nights in row -
was pretty close and could see well -
could have been drone but was sharp and clear -
drone likely have some motion blur - 20 second TL

ive been seeing some things that are hard to explain -
3 nights in a row getting Stationary Flashing light -lasts 10 ish minutes -
stars move flashing stays same place -
flash is to bright to be Geo Stationary sat i think - 35000 km

Its real hard to show things in sky picture that are Tiny in frame -
then add in picture data limit and it just wont work well -

there is a Lot of stuff flying around in sky

[Baurice]

the L thing
few months ago similar in photo 2 nights in row -
was pretty close and could see well -
could have been drone but was sharp and clear -
drone likely have some motion blur - 20 second TL

ive been seeing some things that are hard to explain -
3 nights in a row getting Stationary Flashing light -lasts 10 ish minutes -
stars move flashing stays same place -
flash is to bright to be Geo Stationary sat i think - 35000 km

Its real hard to show things in sky picture that are Tiny in frame -
then add in picture data limit and it just wont work well -

there is a Lot of stuff flying around in sky

I can eliminate a lot of things when they appear in preceding or following frames. such as satellite or aircraft trails. Glad to hear I'm not the only one seeing and photographing strange things. What I do is leave a camera taking photographs automatically. The main target is meteors but I pick up strange objects and stack frames to get constellation shots.

[Groovy2]

I set up 4 Wyze cam V3 -
these cover much of the sky -

watch time lapse in mornings see what was recorded -
takes about a hour to watch 4 cams Time lapse footage -
have recorded over 600 meteors -

V3 is cam I have been seeing flashing lights on -
easy to see on time lapse but in real time flash about once in 15 seconds -

what ever it is its not common - have seen only 3 times in a year -