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Case 20-030: looking for a smoke trail.

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Is the video submitted for Case 20-030 an atmosphere-skimming fireball? If it is, we could reasonably expect to see a smoke trail. The great daylight fireball of 1972 left a smoke trail hundreds of miles long that lingered in the air for several minutes.

However, this video was shot on a moonless night, and it might be hard to see a smoke trail. This video explains how we went looking a sign of it. Nothing conclusive was found.

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Witness Submitted Video with star identifications (Case 20-030)

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It was a clear, moonless night, and the witness was out in his back yard observing comet Neowise with a digital night vision camera when this extremely bright object flew over.

When you have reference objects in a video or photograph, the first order of business is to determine whatever you can about the direction and distance of those objects. In the case of stars, the distances aren’t important, but if you know the date, time, location, and which star you are looking at, then you know the exact location in the sky.

In this video we show the names of a few of the stars as the object passes by. For 64 Cygnus, you might notice that as the object neared, a bright lens flare briefly hijacks the tracker.