“On July 10, 2009, I filmed the Moon through my Astroman60x700 telescope, somewhere from 1:00 to 2:00 am, from the balcony. I live in St. Petersburg. While recording the Moon through the eyepiece of a telescope on a mobile phone with a 2 megapixel camera, I accidentally photographed the flight of an object near the Moon
The quality on a mobile phone is certainly not so hot, but the object is clearly visible anyway. He flew by with tremendous speed, so it seems that even asteroids and meteorites do not fly. Moreover, during normal playback, it is visible as a short flash, but with a slow-motion video (and with a bright monitor brightness) it is clear that this is not a flash. What do you think it could be?"
Expert scientific specialist for a long time engaged in near-earth space Yuri KRASILNIKOV:
- Interesting. And very strange. I must say that I did not get the impression that this is an object flying at high speed towards the moon. On one of the frames, a bright point flashes - and immediately goes out. It is difficult to say exactly what it could be. If shooting on film - one would assume a defect in the image. But with digital cameras, this is hardly an explanation.
Three possible explanations at a glance, though far from perfect.
Maybe a pulsed beacon (like a flashlight) on a passing plane. But there are other lights on the plane that are constantly burning (red, green), and nothing of the kind is visible on the video. Maybe because of the poor characteristics of the cell phone camera, they were not captured? The reader has not indicated exactly where in Petersburg he lives. If in the Pulkovo area, then the flight of the plane is more than likely.
The second is the glare from the satellite. Some spacecraft glare very interestingly. The Iridium satellites are especially famous. I recommend it to everyone who hasn't seen it. A dim star is moving across the sky - at the limit of visibility with the naked eye. And suddenly it rapidly begins to flare up, in a few seconds it becomes much brighter than Venus - and just as quickly dims to its former brightness. This is a sunbeam from a large polished satellite antenna. Forecasts of Iridium outbreaks are regularly published on the Internet, for example, on heavens-above.com (in order to get a forecast, you need to specify the latitude and longitude of the place from where you will be observing, up to several kilometers).
Perhaps in the video there is also a glare of some satellite, which appeared in the sky not far from the Moon. To do this, it is necessary that the Sun is not too low under the horizon (so that it is night on the ground, and the satellite flying over this place is illuminated by the sun) - judging by the place and time of observation, it seems that this condition was met.
Finally, it is possible that we see a small meteor flying almost exactly towards the observer (and quickly burned up). It is sometimes difficult to understand whether an object is moving towards you or in the opposite direction.
And the fact that there really is an object near the moon is hard to believe. A body of this brightness and at such a distance should be several kilometers in size. It is unlikely that such a healthy object could appear like this from an incomprehensible source and then disappear into an unknown place.