Satellite using a green laser visible on all-sky-cam?

No clue but thanks for posting, it's interesting.

Le dot to know like everybody.

Lasers are not perfect beams.  Although they seem nice and tight as viewed across a room, the beam will have divergence.  With a distance of a couple hundred miles or more, it wouldn't surprise me that the beam could be meters across in diameter, perhaps much larger than that.

Maybe it's a measurement device.  Lasers would be very precise to use reflectance of the beam, measuring timing/interference patterns received at the satellite's sensor.  Could be mapping the terrain - geological function…. or a more nefarious reason.

EDIT.  My point being that the beam intensity as seen by the sensor would definitely be highly attenuated.  It's just a really bright star.

Oops, I should have been more detailed with that last sentence, messierman3000.  My bad.  What I meant to say was that the laser would be diffuse enough, after hundreds of miles of travel, to just appear [and very briefly] as a very bright star. I still subscribe primarily to the laser theory, meteor a not-so-distant second probability.  Just have to analyze those spikes - monochromatic laser diffraction or meteor disintegration?  Looking forward to hearing more info on this.

I did a quick calculation, for whatever it is worth.  A green laser in the 500 nm wavelength range (for ease of calculation), let's say from a laser with a beam 1cm in diameter at its source, would have a divergence that will make it 30 meters in diameter from about 1500 km away (wasn't the distance of that Chinese satellite in the 900 mile range?).  That's the theoretical calculation for a perfect beam.

I hope you all have clear skies this weekend - here  in Utah I will only have to deal with a little smoke but will certainly be imaging in B7 urban area.

Mark

I dunno…  A head-on meteor made of copper entering the atmosphere?   If it were more yellow, I'd ask if you are near an observatory.  A lot of active optic systems for large telescopes need an artificial star, which is created by shining a UV laser into the atmosphere to excite a layer of sodium high in the atmosphere.    Are you in Albuquerque?   They do that stuff out at Star Fire on the Sandia range all the time.  It could also be some experiment or measurement being done by satellite.    Lot's of possibilities.

John

Coolhandjo:
To me it looks like a neighbor shining a laser pointer at the sky cam? It seems way to bright and blown out at core to be from outer space.

was the neighbor Superman? 

Do you live near high rise?

Hello everyone

Thanks for all the contributions so far. Just to answer some of the questions above: I live in a semi-rural area in Switzerland, with no high-rise buildings nearby. Nightlife is limited to animals and although my neighbors have teenagers, I don't think they would be playing with a laser at 3:30am on a weekday.

To my knowledge, there is no professional observatory within a 20-30 km radius.

However, I live near a major flight path, but after checking Flightradar24 for the time in question, there was no aircraft nearby.

One more thing: the all-sky-cam has a clear plexi dome, which might make the light source look like it has a radial pattern and/or create some reflections.

/Ralf

FlapAstro:
Hello everyone

Thanks for all the contributions so far. Just to answer some of the questions above: I live in a semi-rural area in Switzerland, with no high-rise buildings nearby. Nightlife is limited to animals and although my neighbors have teenagers, I don't think they would be playing with a laser at 3:30am on a weekday.

To my knowledge, there is no professional observatory within a 20-30 km radius.

However, I live near a major flight path, but after checking Flightradar24 for the time in question, there was no aircraft nearby.

One more thing: the all-sky-cam has a clear plexi dome, which might make the light source look like it has a radial pattern and/or create some reflections.

/Ralf

Is this the Raspberry Pi HQ camera?? If so how do you find it's performance?? I've seen a lot of negative reviews about it and I'm looking at building an All-Sky camera for fun

@Lumpi3000 I think you nailed it. I had dismissed it at first, as it was passing into earth’s shadow, but as it is actively emitting light that would be irrelevant.

/Ralf

Just a test of god's rods as other posters surely must have mentioned?