Bright light passing Germany NNW to SSW on Nov 30 1750 UTC

[eng]

In a post on Bluesky a user finds a bright (exo-atmospheric?) light passing two webcams 850 kms apart on German North Sea island Amrum (N54.7, E8.3 - ish) and Austrian mountains in Saalbach-Hinterglemm (N57.4 E12.6 - ish) and wonders what it may be.

He also links to source YouTube here and his own video (a bit sensationalist... essentially only explaining the webcam pics from the Bluesky post) here.

I was wondering whether anyone is interested in helping ID that? With knowledge on where to look up known space vehicles it may be very quick...

Also, if this thread as such is unwanted, please remove.

Edit:
Added lat/lon, screengrab, second Youtube link and comment on the video.

 

[Mauro]

Sure you can post screengrabs, indeed you should, because there's a 'no-click' policy here: evidence should be immediately avaliable without having to click on an off-site link (the link is needed too of course). Yeah I know it looks weird, but it's one of those things which make Metabunk a better forum, believe me. You may also want to read first the posting guidelines.

 

[Mendel]

Date and time would be very helpful.

 

[eng]

Sure you can post screengrabs, indeed you should, because there's a 'no-click' policy here: evidence should be immediately avaliable without having to click on an off-site link (the link is needed too of course). Yeah I know it looks weird, but it's one of those things which make Metabunk a better forum, believe me. You may also want to read first the posting guidelines.

Thanks. Edited a bit. Hope that's fine

 

[eng]

Date and time would be very helpful.

See thread title, 30 Nov 2024, 1750 UTC

 

[JMartJr]

Can astronomy geniuses work out the alignment, especially from the second image where there are lots of stars? The images look similar to a STEVE to me, an aurora-related phenomenon:

STEVE (backronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that appears as a purple and green light ribbon in the night sky, named in late 2016 by aurora watchers from Alberta, Canada. According to analysis of satellite data from the European Space Agency's Swarm mission, the phenomenon is caused by a 25 km (16 mi) wide ribbon of hot plasma at an altitude of 450 km (280 mi), with a temperature of 3,000 °C (3,270 K; 5,430 °F) and flowing at a speed of 6 km/s (3.7 mi/s) (compared to 10 m/s (33 ft/s) outside the ribbon). The phenomenon is not rare, but had not been investigated and described scientifically prior to that time.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEVE
ALignment would matter, as STEVE appears to always align in a certain direction (spoilered here for those who prefer deciding what the alignment is FIRST and only then seeing what it would be expected to be!)

Spoiler: How STEVE aligns...

The phenomenon appears as a very narrow arc extending for hundreds or thousands of kilometers, aligned east–west. It generally lasts for twenty minutes to an hour. As of March 2018, STEVE phenomena have only been spotted in the presence of an aurora. (emphasis added)

Me, I suspect the alignment will at some point be shown to be a bit more variable than that, possibly during more extreme solar events, or a sister-phenomenon will be discovered, based on viewing of what looked exactly like one during the Aurora of May 10 2024 here in Charlotte, identical to pictures and descriptions but out of alignment by around 45 degrees.

(Note that written descriptions call STEVE purple/lavender, sometimes green, but while those colors often show up nearby or near the ends of STEVE, in pictures "he" almost always looks white.)

 

[jarlrmai]

The 1st webcam is here

https://www.saalbach.com/en/live-info/livecams

It seems to be a sort of semi live panorama, because of this the time is probably approximated

The exposure time is quite long as expected as its night etc, you can see planes as strings of lights in various images

https://saalbach.panomax.com/zwoelferkogel

You can go back to the Sat Nov 30 2024 18:50 (17:50 UTC) to see the light streak

I can't do a direct link as its a web app embedded

 

[jarlrmai]

It's the Zwölferkogel camera located here

https://maps.app.goo.gl/7T8Abb5aCmN1jbZeA

This screengrab shows the direction the panorama camera was facing when it captured the streak

Because this is a ski resort there are a lot of lights around

 

[eng]

The person posting on Bluesky has followed up with another webcam spotting 110 minutes later, and also with the theory it's the payload from NROL-126 manoeuvring to its intended orbit, with the brightness resulting from visible thruster emissions.

Link to post: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisschmitz.bsky.social/post/3lcaq3yrqsk2z

Link to post: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisschmitz.bsky.social/post/3lcargzypcs2e

 

[jarlrmai]

This is the other camera from the social media post also looking west.

https://amrum.panomax.com/norddorf

 

[Eburacum]

Woo-hoo! Hall thrusters!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-effect_thruster
High specific impulse, but very low thrust.

 

[MonkeeSage]

The person posting on Bluesky has followed up with another webcam spotting 110 minutes later, and also with the theory it's the payload from NROL-126 manoeuvring to its intended orbit, with the brightness resulting from visible thruster emissions.

I like that it's thought to be a payload delivered by SpaceX and it looks like two lights (starlink satellite flares?) are making their logo at the bottom.