A fire ball but no dragon (Tom Gray)

Contains: Extremely wide field

A fire ball but no dragon

Thank goodness Space X Dragon reached orbit without incident yesterday,and wishing the two astronauts on board a safe flight. I watched carefully for a glimpse of the Dragon rocket as it passed over the UK on its journey to ISS. Using the excellent NightCap App (iOS) I decided to use the 'ISS setting' to try and capture this event - to be immediately greeted by ISS passing over around 22:10 BST.

With my iPhone camera shutter open, I started to see the telltale signs of star trails, and a large 'moon trail' in the twilight, when a fast, bright fireball streaked SW, brightening and spluttering in the upper atmosphere (central in my image), always special, but rare to capture anything beyond a rapidly fading memory ... lucky imaging at its best.

An obvious plane travelling W to E, low on S horizon. Just to the east of the moon, another oblique trail - travelling SE, could this be Dragon X or another meteor? I need to check the details, but this 10 minute image was taken over the predicted period of fly by (22:15-22:21). I've gently edited to improve contrast and saturation.

[postscript - definitely another meteor - a lucky strike, and pleased to hear that the dragon docked safely]

Camera Lens Astrophotography
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3568785
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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