NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2023 Oct 9, 08:56 -0700
David, yes, that's Vega and Eltanin! I agree. Rasalhague is actually the navigation star that I was describing. It's not too far out of frame to the left.
The streaks in the image all have the same shape and pattern of intensity bursts. They're also all nearly parallel. That rules out a lot of possibilities including meteors and satellites. I decided to plot the centers of each of the streaks, drawing little circles on the image. And it turns out the circles echo the star patterns: the Keystone of Hercules, the Head of Draco, other simple shapes... The stars are copied in streaks. The most likely explanation here, I think, is that the camera was bumped during the exposure. This often happens right at the beginning of the exposure when the button (hardware or software) is tapped. Here's a brief video I made to illustrate the patterns and alignment...
Frank Reed
