Allsky: My First Few Steps

[glyderman]

Hi Brenski,

I liked your verious allsky vids. This isn't about using sharpcam so I hope I will be forgiven writing my observation on hre. It is about Allsky though.

I use Thomas Jacquin's Allsky software along with a Raspberrypi HQ camera doing 20 second exposures overnight all on a raspberrypi V3b. I live in south east of the UK near south coast.

This about a observation I made the other night and I would like to know if anyone else recorded it. I had my allsky cam running for the Draconids meteor shower on 10th October. I caught a few meteor trails across the sky, and a couple were very long and vivid. Very pleasing to get a few good shots finally after using my allsky for 2 years now, when weather permits. I don't rely on the Allsky software to do the star startails and video of the night, I find I have better results with the program 'Startrails'. I always do a star trails image first then do a 3 frame per second video to watch after.

When the star trails had completed I notice one very bright 'star' was stationary in the star trail image. I had never had a hot pixel in that area before. so I watched the nights video carefully to see what it was. At precisely 21:39:12 on 8th October there was a flare pinpoint of light that was brighter than any other star in the sky. My first thought was dying star, my second thought was don't be stupid, they can last for centuries, not just a few seconds. So all i could think of was a metor heading directly toward the camera as it entered the atmosphere, so it did not leave a trail for me to see. Then this morning I heard on the news about the star explosion GRB 221009A recorded on the 9th October and it has made me wonder. From the reports I have read, it was recorded on the Sagitta constellation. The flash I recorded was roughly in the direction of Camelopardals. It was in only 1 frame so it lasts less than 20 seconds. I positioned the camera in same place I alway do and have never seen any artifact like that occur before from any nearby light so I believe it was a flash in the sky not relfection or anything on the dome. I really don't believe I could be lucky enough to capture a dying star, I really believe it was just a meteor coming in a trajectory straight at the camera, although the odds of that happening must be huge. Does anyone else know about this flash of light or have they recorded it? I have attached a star trails jpg for that night with annotaion of the flare. Ignore red light around the garden i was me just checking my telescope earlier using my red head light. I had actually left the garden my 9pm so the recorded flash was not anything from me reflecting on the dome. I have never uploaded to YT before so can't show a clip of the flare I am afraid.

I hope I am not making a fool of myself with this post, but it was so unusual to see that type of very bright pinpoint of light flash, I have been using my allsky for 2 years and never seen it happen before. Your thoughts are welcome Brenski

star trails 8-10-22 annotated low res.jpg (982.77 KiB) Viewed 6896 times

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[brenski]

I've no idea - being a novice myself.

I don't think you'll get much response here either - as the thread was last active 2 years ago!

You'd stand a much better chance if you created your own thread with a relevant title to draw attention.

[Menno555]

I don't think this is the GRB 221009A explosion itself since that happend during European daytime. And the afterglow of it wasn't bright enough for this what you see here.
A straight onward meteor is most likely here. It isn't observed a lot but there are rather a lot of captures of it. Most of the times though it's not noticed because of guiding/tracking and then it looks like just another star. But with all sky and no tracking, a bright enough meteor gives this effect.
But if you could post that 1 frame with the flash, we could pinpoint things better.

And don't worry about making yourself foolish. A lot of us (myself included) on one time or another thought to have captured something (very) special, became enthusiastic about it and then discovered it was a meteor, lensflare, weird pixel or something already known (I once thought I discovered a supernova because it was not mentioned anywhere. In the end it turned out to be really a supernova but it was only discovered a month before that, so info was very sparse).

Menno

[glyderman]

Thanks for your replies.

Menno, Yes I will post that frame on a new topic as brenski suggested.
I must admit when I first heard about the GRB 221009A I was hoping, as the flash I recorded had made me wonder how odd it was at the time. But then after further checking I realised it wasn't. Oh well keep looking at the sky and hope I guess.