So I go out to try and take some pictures of Jupiter with the D90 since it's at opposition tonight. Take a few test shots, and number three shows a fuzzy green blob just below Jupiter that I couldn't see with the naked eye. I don't take much notice and take a few more shots. The blob is still there in the next few shots, but in just a few minutes it's moved! I start taking a few more shots, and start looking at them in sequence... it's a tail pointing away from the sun! I keep taking pictures, and within just a few minutes the tail is disappearing and the blob is fading out. Within 6 minutes it went from a bright flare to invisible (on camera) and moved a quarter of the way across the sky.
Comets don't usually move that fast, but it definitely had a tail that pointed away from the sun. When asked to identify a comet, you're supposed to take measurements over several days... It was gone in 6 minutes! I just happened to go out and take pictures of Jupiter at exactly the right time. So I'm really not sure what is was. I posted my pictures on Flickr for posterity on the insanely off chance that it's my discovery
, but mainly to ask some astronomy groups about what it is.
I put my shots together into an animation... The camera was repositioned in every shot so had to stabilize each frame against Jupiter, the same way they stabilized the shaky bigfoot footage. Added all the info I could come up with to the pic... my latitude and longitude, the exact EXIF time (I checked my camera against atomic time and corrected it to the second), and camera settings. Hopefully with Jupiter as a locating point, that's enough to ID it.
Here's the photoset with original images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/plipinski/sets/72157621918821181/
And the animation. Jupiter goes blurry in the second half because it was getting blocked by tree branches... I didn't really care about it at that point. I'm not zoomed in very far at all... the animation takes place over 6 minutes... over that time it probably went the distance of a ruler held at arms length... it was really moving:
Comets don't usually move that fast, but it definitely had a tail that pointed away from the sun. When asked to identify a comet, you're supposed to take measurements over several days... It was gone in 6 minutes! I just happened to go out and take pictures of Jupiter at exactly the right time. So I'm really not sure what is was. I posted my pictures on Flickr for posterity on the insanely off chance that it's my discovery
, but mainly to ask some astronomy groups about what it is.I put my shots together into an animation... The camera was repositioned in every shot so had to stabilize each frame against Jupiter, the same way they stabilized the shaky bigfoot footage.
Added all the info I could come up with to the pic... my latitude and longitude, the exact EXIF time (I checked my camera against atomic time and corrected it to the second), and camera settings. Hopefully with Jupiter as a locating point, that's enough to ID it.Here's the photoset with original images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/plipinski/sets/72157621918821181/
And the animation. Jupiter goes blurry in the second half because it was getting blocked by tree branches... I didn't really care about it at that point. I'm not zoomed in very far at all... the animation takes place over 6 minutes... over that time it probably went the distance of a ruler held at arms length... it was really moving:
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