Explanation:
What in heavens-above was that?
Not everything seen on the night sky is understood.
The Night Sky Live
(NSL) project keeps its global array of continuously
updating web cameras (CONCAMs) always watching the night sky.
On the night of 2004 December 17, the
fisheye
CONCAM perched on top of an
active volcano in
Haleakala,
Hawaii,
saw something moving across the night sky that remains mysterious.
The NSL team might have disregarded the above streak as unconfirmed,
but the Mauna Kea CONCAM
on the next Hawaiian island recorded the
same thing.
The NSL team might then have disregarded the streak as a satellite,
but no record of it was found in the
heavens-above.com
site that usually documents bright satellite events.
If you think you have a
reasonable explanation for the streak,
please contribute to the on-line discussion.
Current candidates include a known satellite that was somehow missed by
heavens-above,
a recently launched rocket, and a
passing space rock.
Volunteers are solicited by the NSL project to help
monitor the operability of each NSL CONCAM,
including looking for
interesting anomalies such as this.
Disclosure: Robert Nemiroff collaborates on both the
NSL and
APOD projects.
