Chuck, the first was taken at 3:14 a.m. and the second at 3:44. Thanks for the interest, Joe ------------------------------ On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 5:40 AM MDT Chuck Hards wrote:

Joe's first pic, the brighter trail of the two, has that meteor "feel" to it- it's not solidly consistent throughout it's length, and the knots aren't regular which could denote satellite rotation; while the dimmer one seems more like a satellite or small piece of space junk.

Knowing the time of night of the exposures could help nail it down. Satellites shine by reflected sunlight so are typically seen shortly after sunset and before sunrise. Only those in very high orbits are visible in the middle of the night, and those don't tend to move very fast. Geosynchronous satellites at most just bob around a bit relative to the background stars, but not over very short lengths of time.

If we knew when the pics were taken, it would be easy to compare them to online databases of known satellites and larger space junk. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of smaller bits of orbiting flotsam and jetsam that aren't catalogued.

My gut is telling me that Joe got at least one meteor and possibly two depending on time of night; some careful sleuthing may prove me wrong.

On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Jared Smith <jared@smithplanet.com> wrote:

...

For what it's worth, I think it most likely that they are satellites, but we'll never know for sure.

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