Starship Asterisk*

Window Seat over Hudson Bay

Explanation: On the August 18 night flight from San Francisco to Zurich, a window seat offered this tantalizing view when curtains of light draped a colorful glow across the sky over Hudson Bay. Constructed by digitally stacking six short exposures made with a hand held camera, the scene records the shimmering aurora borealis or northern lights just as the approaching high altitude sunrise illuminated the northeastern horizon. It also caught the flash of a Perseid meteor streaking beneath the handle stars of the Big Dipper of the north. A few days past the meteor shower's peak, its trail still points across the sky toward Perseus. Beautiful aurorae and shower meteors both occur in Earth's upper atmosphere at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so, far above commercial airline flights. The aurora are caused by energetic charged particles from the magnetosphere, while meteors are trails of comet dust.

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Nice!

I don't remember ever seeing a meteor trail that goes crooked!

dhlynch wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:51 pm I don't remember ever seeing a meteor trail that goes crooked!

Must be just high altitude winds blowing the material of the trail.

dhlynch wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:51 pm I don't remember ever seeing a meteor trail that goes crooked!

I would believe it is camera shake caused by airplane vibrations.

De58te wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 8:00 pm

dhlynch wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:51 pm I don't remember ever seeing a meteor trail that goes crooked!

I would believe it is camera shake caused by airplane vibrations.

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I've seen the same effect with ground-mounted meteor cameras that are being buffeted by wind. The direction of vibration is random, so all it does to stars is increase their size a bit. But a moving meteor isolates the motion more clearly and follows a wiggly line.

Awesome shot...

is that a gremlin on the wing????

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