Sunday, 7 April 2013

Space Flotsam and Jetsam



Last night was cold but clear.  As I was a bit tired I didn't set up my telescope but instead took a number of photographs of the sky using my Canon DSLR mounted on a camera tripod.  I used a selection of new and old lenses but was limited to 5 second exposures  -  otherwise the rotation of the earth would smear out the stars into lines as they appeared to revolve around the pole-star 'Polaris'.

When I downloaded the images to my laptop I noticed the tell-tale lines created by either faint meteors, satellites or space junk (bits of rockets,boosters and spent fuel tanks etc).

These two images show separate areas of the constellation Ursa Major- The Great Bear, with two different trails created by who knows what?


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