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?"

Comments

Re:Um, flaw in the film?

[pdh11]

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

OMG the sky is falling!!!

[gosand]

Meteor experts don't think it's a meteor. Atmospheric scientists don't think it's lightning

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.

Re:My solution

[stuffman64]

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.