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A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia
Koyaanisqatsi writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day presents a challenge worthy of a large audience: as it says, "Meteor experts don't think it's a meteor. Atmospheric scientists don't think it's lightning". An intriguing dark streak and bright flash that defies explanation showed up on some cloud monitoring pictures. The forumsetup to discuss it is currently hosed, so perhaps fellow slashdotters can shed some light over the mystery?"
Seriously, it just looks like the guy needs to clean his camera lens to me.
It's clearly an artifact. If the flash at the end of the streak was something "out there", it would have to have either hit the water or the light. The after pic shows no waves and the pole is unharmed--there's no even any "smoke" left. It's hard to judge how much time has passed, but it can't have been more than a few seconds. (On the far right is a speeding motorboat and he only gets a little ways between each frame.) With no fragments or smoke just a moment later, it has to be an artifact of some kind.
Canon PowerShot G3
My guess is a very bright event (the failure of the streetlight, probably) causing CCD overexposure and subsequent temporary ill effects on the rest of the CCD scan line. Any Canon geeks in the house who know about the CCD scanning direction of a Powershot G3 and can compare it with the streak "trajectory" angle?
Peter
You beat me to it - I noticed because of the changing shape of the clouds, though. Clouds don't move downwards and shrink.
Paleontologists don't think it is a dinosaur, NASA doesn't think it is a spacecraft, financial experts don't think it will have an adverse effect on the economy, lawyers could be preparing a lawsuit on behalf of Bigfoot for IP infringement, the FDA has said it could have adverse side effect, the White House has declined to comment. Currently the photo is on sale at eBay with the high bid at $785.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
More importantly, both the "before" and "after" are taken AFTER the "strange" shot. anyone care to comment?
-- All That's Evil in the Geek Space
Line up the three images in order and tab through them. THe time between each image is very short. Therefore the "line" was in for an extreemly short period of time. To me, the line looks like what you would see had a string or hair passed in front of the lens as it were capturing that frame. The glint on the end could simply be something on teh end of it. First thing that comes to mind would be a spider
"the spiders can fly by wire, called "ballooning". The spider raises her abdomen and releases a thread in the breeze that grows longer and longer until the upward lift is sufficient and the spider is lifted."
perhaps not THAT particular spider.. thats just the first google link that demonstrates my point.
so, sorry... there really is nothing to see here. Move along. No looking into the light thingy necessary.
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I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
Definately. Check out this image of a bug, though in somewhat more focus. Notice the characteristic black streak as in the "meteor photo?" The "mystery" object is nothing more than a bug which just happens to be flying in the right place at the right time.
Also, I did some Photoshop work (inspired by a previous post), and despite the arguement that it is a perfectly straight line, I tend to disagree. IMHO, here is definately some deviation to it, as the parallel lines in my image show (though it's not very good). See it here.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Look closely, and you'll see several pixels light up in the "parking lot" area during the "blast".
All I see looks like sensor noise, with the odd bits of jpeg artifacts thrown in.