Nightime Contrail? [Light Pillar]

[deirdre]

Occurred : 5/24/2014 00:45 (Entered as : 05/24/14 00:45)

I'm totally confused by your times, so this may be the wrong night? this guy describes something similar and says its a fuel dump from a Japanese satellite being launched. probably the wrong night though. http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2014/05/24/camelopardalid-meteor-show-more-a-trickle-than-a-storm/

 

[Kyle Foreman]

I made my observation in Oregon at 12:45AM PST 5/24/14

It looks like the Japanese Satellite launch was seen at 1AM CDT on 5/24/14 in the story, which would be 11:00PM PST 5/23/14.

 

[Amanda V Johnson]

But you say the photo is basically looking north? So that would seem to rule out the moon. It does look VERY like the light pillar on the right above, which is some distant city light.

Can you give the precise time and location of the photo? It should be possible to use the stars to find the direction it is in, and the see what lays along that line.

The big star is Capella, other stars line up in Stellarium from that rough locations and time. [Update: this overlay is incorrect, due to 1 hr time difference]



(Edit) and 10° W of N seems pretty much spot on.

I just saw the same thing this morning about 4:30am 2 miles south of Seattle Washington. I couldn't figure out how to explain what I saw until I found this forum from years ago. It definitely wasn't a pillar.