Satellite Flares
The weather last weekend was prime for stargazing, but it didn't happen. Personal business left me too tired to even think about staying up all night. So I ended up going through some images I took back in April - 840 images, to be exact. Besides the occasional airliner and meteor, I found a couple of satellite flares.
A satellite flare appears in this 25 second exposure. Its trail shows up in no less than eight images.
A flare, or glint, happens when the sun reflects off the surfaces of the satellite. I don't know which satellite this was and I really wasn't looking for it. From the number of images it shows up in, the satellite was visible for about four minutes and flared twice.
Meteor in a 25 second exposure taken the same night. The trail only appears in this single image.
Compared to a meteor, the flare looks quite different. The second image depicts a meteor that was captured on the same night.