I believe this photo to be of the same event, some two years ago. The photo is a time exposure so everything is smeared-out, doesn't really look like what I saw. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevin-palmer/14268871974/ On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 5:55 AM, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Ed,
I stepped outside the shop to look at the sky early one morning, and noticed what at first I thought to be a small cloud, low on the southwest horizon. After a few minutes, it didn't move relative to the background stars, so I grapped my binocular. It looked like a large nebula, and over time was getting larger. I called Patrick who was still awake at his home observatory, and it was below his horizon, but eventually rose above the mountains from his location. It had dissipated a bit but he thought he could detect something through the clouds. It was in a clear patch of sky from my perspective. I found reference to it on Cloudy Nights later that day, and it turned out to be a Japanese booster rocket that was dumping surplus fuel, which was illuminated by the sun at that high altitude. About a half dozen people in the west and southwest had clear enough skies that morning to catch sight of it and report it.
Pretty cool, actually.
I've also seen a number of weather balloons at high altitude very early in the morning, sky still black. They look like first-magnitude stars where none should be. They slowly drift, which rules out supernovae or close novae.
On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 5:44 AM, Ed <utnatsedj1@xmission.com> wrote:
Chuck,
"...fuel outgassing from a Japanese booster rocket."
How about running that past us again?
Ed