Today I spent some time compositing the images from Tuesday night’s time-lapse into one single image. A total of 159 30-second images (from 10:02 to 11:29 PM) were used in the image below, and effectively show everything from each image, including Brennen, Matt and Kevin’s headlamps descending the ridge. Note the size of the cloud compared to the time-lapse video previously posted; what is shown below is the apparent movement of the cloud as it came into the field of view from bottom to top, until I turned the camera off.
Here is a crop of the center-right of the image; you can see some unknown space junk traversing across the star trails. This dim ‘flare’ repeated 5 times over the course of 17 minutes, lasting for approximately 30 seconds each time, and then disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Flares are caused by satellites rotating at various speeds, intermittently reflecting the light of the sun back to the observer.
Weird stuff out there in the night sky.