Is this a star or ufo?

Marine0811

Active Member
Hello, I took these pictures of what I first thought was a star, but when I zoomed in the object looked different in the pictures. Any idea on what it is? 20170925_200321.jpg 20170925_200320.jpg 20170925_200304.jpg 20170925_200301.jpg 20170925_200257.jpg 20170925_200133.jpg 20170925_200131.jpg
 
A planet?

If you know the exact time and location, and the rough heading then you should be able to find it in Stellarium.
 
Venus. (The Queen of the UFO's)

An hour or so before dawn, looking east, right?

I've been watching Mars and Venus getting closer together for weeks. Just 3 days ago they were within 1/4 degree of each other (half the width of the full moon). But Mars is very faint compared to Venus.

Venus shows phases, like the moon. I can't be sure but it looks as if the top photo is in good enough focus to show Venus in the gibbous phase that it's currently in. (So it's not a perfect circle.)
 
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A planet?

If you know the exact time and location, and the rough heading then you should be able to find it in Stellarium.

I installed something called star tracker, is that app accurate? I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE. Will the stars and planets remain in similar locations for an amount of time or will they appear in different places daily?
 
I thought that I should add that the pictures were taken quickly one after the other and they go from bottom to top in the order they were taken.
 
I installed something called star tracker, is that app accurate? I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE. Will the stars and planets remain in similar locations for an amount of time or will they appear in different places daily?
The Earth does rotate and orbit the sun.
 
I installed something called star tracker, is that app accurate? I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE. Will the stars and planets remain in similar locations for an amount of time or will they appear in different places daily?

They are in similar position at the same time of day each day, but do move, especially the planets. So you want to get the date and time right.
 
I have a few more that were taken right before the ones I posted.
20170925_200111.jpg
 

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I installed something called star tracker, is that app accurate? I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE. Will the stars and planets remain in similar locations for an amount of time or will they appear in different places daily?

From night to night at the same hour of the night they will be in very much the same place.

I'm guessing it's the planet Venus or possibly the star Sirius. Just get up at the same time this morning and you'll see it. Start sorting things out by going to the site below.
 
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This site is easy to use. https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yourhorizon

The only tricky part is using UTC. South Carolina is -4 UTC. It just means you add 4 hours to your local time to get UTC. I've set the time to tomorrow morning at 6:30 (10:30 UTC), which I'm guessing is about the time you saw this. If I'm guessing wrong just set the time correctly. The stars change position during the night for the same reason the sun moves across the sky.



The white one with the female sign is Venus and the red one with the male sign is Mars. Venus is much brighter than Mars and is the brightest "star" you'll see in the sky by far.

Start playing around with this site by setting the time differently and you'll see how the stars move during the night. They move for the same reason the sun does - the earth is rotating.

For your first amateur astronomy project, see if you can identify Mars as well. Look at them each morning and you'll see Mars moving a little bit farther away from Venus each day.

Your first constellation can be Orion, because that's up at that time in the south. Look for the bright red star Betelgeuse in Orion. You'll see another bright star just to the left and down from Orion, Sirius. Sirius often flashes bright colors like a diamond or the lights on the top of a distant cop car. That's called "chromatic scintillation."


 
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I can't see anything in particular in the SE at that time. So I suspect you might just have have an out-of-focus star.
 
You need to make the time zone and daylight savings clear to avoid possible confusion.
He's in South Carolina, pictures taken in September. Therefore UTC -4.
I installed something called star tracker, is that app accurate? I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE.
How is the app calculating your direction? Do you remember the direction you were facing? Also some approximate GPS coordinates.
 
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I am in SC and the direction according to that app was pointed SE.
It could be a distant plane flying toward you. Are you still in Boiling Springs, SC? For this location and the time, the likely candidate flight is American Airlines 2388 from Orlando to Chicago performed by Boeing 737-823 N875NN.
 
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Fomalhaut. One of the brightest stars in the sky. And it stands out because the stars around it are dim.

(With the caveat that it's kind of surprising that you could capture it so well on a handheld camera)


http://earthsky.org/tonight/lonely-autumn-star-shines-brightly-in-southeast

Tonight – September 28, 2017 – look for the lonelieststar. Which one is that? Many people would say the answer is Fomalhaut, a bright star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus the Southern Fish, bright enough to be seen on a moonlit night. Fomalhaut is a bright star – visible from all but far-northern latitudes – located in a region of the sky that contains only very faint stars. So it appears solitary in the night sky.

From the Northern Hemisphere, at about 8 to 9 p.m., look for a solitary star that’s peeking out at you just above the southeast horizon. See it? No other bright star sits so low in the southeast at this time of year. From this hemisphere, Fomalhaut dances close the southern horizon until well after midnight on these autumn nights. It reaches its highest point for the night in the southern sky at roughly 10:30 p.m. local time (11:30 p.m. daylight-saving time). At mid-northern latitudes, Fomalhaut sets in the southwest around 2 to 3 a.m. local time (3 to 4 a.m. local daylight-saving time).

From the Southern Hemisphere, Fomalhaut rises in a southeasterly direction, too, but this star climbs much higher up in the Southern Hemisphere sky and stays out for a longer period of time. Click here to find out precisely when Fomalhaut rises, transits (climbs highest up for the night) and sets in your sky.

Remember … it’s bright and solitary. The coming month or so presents a good time to see this star.

Fomalhaut is a bright white star, the brightest star in an otherwise empty-looking part of the sky. In skylore, you sometimes see it called the Lonely One, or the Solitary One, or sometimes the Autumn Star. Depending on whose list you believe, Fomalhaut is either the 17th or the 18th brightest star in the sky.
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It's still visible at 8:00 PM in S.C. As a matter of fact it's higher in the sky, slightly farther to the west. And there's no moon, so it will be more visible. Go out tonight and look for it.

 
It's still visible at 8:00 PM in S.C. As a matter of fact it's higher in the sky, slightly farther to the west. And there's no moon, so it will be more visible. Go out tonight and look for it.


I will check tonight if the clouds clear out. I can't recall ever seeing a star that noticable in that location before. The only one I can compare the brightness to is probably the north star. I need to take more pictures around the same time to compare.
I thought it was interesting how it appears to change brightness and shape. Do you know why there is a blackened area around it, is this a camera effect?
Screenshot_20171010-182658.jpg

The next two show the shape is different.
Screenshot_20171010-183340.jpg
The one below is the most interesting to me. I am always still when recording or taking pictures so that I don't get any motion blur. I don't know why the object would appear this way unless it was moving.
SmartSelectImage_2017-10-10-18-40-25.png
 
I thought it was interesting how it appears to change brightness and shape.

It's called "scintillation." Or you could just say it's twinkling. Bright stars on the horizon do that.

In simple terms, twinkling of stars is caused by the passing of light through different layers of a turbulent atmosphere. Most scintillation effects are caused by anomalous refraction caused by small-scale fluctuations in air density usually related to temperature gradients.
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I will check tonight if the clouds clear out. I can't recall ever seeing a star that noticable in that location before.

The stars in that part of the sky (south) slowly change during the year. This summer you'll see the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius and the brightest part of the Milky Way in that same spot.

Do you know why there is a blackened area around it, is this a camera effect?

I don't know. Probably.


The next two show the shape is different.
Screenshot_20171010-183340.jpg
The one below is the most interesting to me. I am always still when recording or taking pictures so that I don't get any motion blur. I don't know why the object would appear this way unless it was moving.
SmartSelectImage_2017-10-10-18-40-25.png

Even the smallest movement with the lens zoomed in will cause the image to streak. I'm not surprised at the streaks. I'm surprised at the relative lack of streaks. If you don't have a tripod, rest the camera and your hands on something solid.

A big problem is focus. So many cameras these days don't have a manual focus. Automatic focus gets fooled by the dark, featureless sky, and you get blurry out of focus images. Then the out of focus star in the photo looks as if it has a strange shape.
 
It's called "scintillation." Or you could just say it's twinkling. Bright stars on the horizon do that.

In simple terms, twinkling of stars is caused by the passing of light through different layers of a turbulent atmosphere. Most scintillation effects are caused by anomalous refraction caused by small-scale fluctuations in air density usually related to temperature gradients.
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The stars in that part of the sky (south) slowly change during the year. This summer you'll see the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius and the brightest part of the Milky Way in that same spot.



I don't know. Probably.




Even the smallest movement with the lens zoomed in will cause the image to streak. I'm not surprised at the streaks. I'm surprised at the relative lack of streaks. If you don't have a tripod, rest the camera and your hands on something solid.

A big problem is focus. So many cameras these days don't have a manual focus. Automatic focus gets fooled by the dark, featureless sky, and you get blurry out of focus images. Then the out of focus star in the photo looks as if it has a strange shape.

I looked outside last night and couldn't see any easily visible stars as the night before looking in the same area. I could see some easily visible stars in a different direction, so I played around when taking pictures of them. I moved the camera around just before and during the pics to test how they would look out of focus. I saw some distortion, but pretty far off from how other objects looked in the images that are in focus. Some of these were in some images and not in others when they were taken in the same direction seconds apart.
SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-30-42.png
SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-23-41.png SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-25-11.png SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-24-26.png SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-27-27.png Screenshot_20171011-172914.jpg SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-25-40.png SmartSelectImage_2017-10-11-17-31-16.png
Here is the area and direction that I was taking pictures.
Screenshot_20171011-182554.jpg
I used the star app that I added and found it pretty confusing as far as determining what I was looking at. I will try it again.
 
I looked outside last night and couldn't see any easily visible stars as the night before looking in the same area.

Because there were clouds?

I used the star app that I added and found it pretty confusing as far as determining what I was looking at. I will try it again.

These newer online programs are overly complicated for beginners.

Decades ago I used this book. Simple star charts for each month.



There's an updated version of this book. Just look on Amazon.

Another thing that might be better is a star finder. https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Glow-in-the+Dark+Star+Finder/020043

It has two scales: Day of the year and hour of the night. Just be patient, go out a few times each week, pick out the brightest stars, and try to recognize the constellations. Before you know it, the night sky will be as familiar to you as the streets and buildings in your town.

 
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Clouds at night can be tricky. The sky might just look blank. But without actually being there, it's hard for me to tell exactly what's going on. I suggest just moving on from that one experience, and teach yourself the night sky. Pretty soon you'll be able to point out stars and constellations to friends and family. You'll be able to recognize planets just because of the way they look. Venus is very bright and blue-white, Saturn is a salmon-yellow, Mars is a dull red , etc.
 
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Clouds at night can be tricky. The sky might just look blank. But without actually being there, it's hard for me to tell exactly what's going on. I suggest just moving on from that one experience, and teach yourself the night sky. Pretty soon you'll be able to point out stars and constellations to friends and family. You'll be able to recognize planets just because of the way they look. Venus is very bright and blue-white, Saturn is a salmon-yellow, Mars is a dull red , etc.
And to add to that, contact your local astronomy group. They are normally very friendly and always willing to help new stargazers navigate around the night sky. You don't need expensive kit either, a good pair of binoculars will do to get started. I've got an old 1950's ex British army pair, 8x40, paid £3.00 for them in a charity shop, but even they will split the odd binary like Mizar and Alcor in Ursa Major (The Great Bear / The Plough / The Big Dipper), give a faint view of objects like The Orion Nebular, show the larger moons of Jupiter and give spectacular images of the moon.
 
This can be your project for the next week. At about 8:00 p.m. your time, the north sky will look like this. The names are names of constellations. The big dipper is setting, Ursa Minor (the little dipper) is dim and you won't be able to pick it out because there's too much light pollution, Draco and Cepheus are not very interesting. Concentrate on one thing. Try to pick out Cassiopeia. It's a big W. Later you'll learn how to use Cassiopeia to pick out the north star, (which is a dim, unremarkable star.)




This is what the southwest sky will look at the same time. There are some pretty spectacular things to see. The yellow disk is the planet Saturn. The constellation Sagittarius looks like a teapot - the handle is up and the spout is down. You should be able to pick that out. The bright red star near the horizon is Antares. These should all be bright enough to see. (The white disk with the P is Pluto, which is far too dim to see.)


 
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I miss this guy... This is just as true in early October, 2017 as it was in early October, 1987. Orion is up in the early morning. (So are spectacular Sirius and Venus.)

 
Another way to spot Sagittarius and Scorpius...



Right there is the brightest part of the Milky Way. But... you won't see it. Too much light pollution in the city, or even a small town.
 
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