Context: Taken tonight (Feb. 15th) around 7:24PM Eastern time in Toronto, Canada (43 40 N, 73 23 W), looking straight up and a bit East. (Left side of the image is North, right side is South).
Taken with 5x optical zoom with my iphone so apologies for the poor quality.
Also, it looks yellowish here, but in real life it looked very faint and almost a deep dark red.
I thought it was the moon at first but doesn’t match that or any stars. Not Jupiter either, as this was quite a bit “North” of Jupiter in the sky, if that makes sense, and this was much wider/bigger, almost moon-sized. About an hour later it was completely gone.
The only thing that somewhat comes close in position is the star Capella which is the bright spot left of center. Even Jupiter kind of looks like a bright point when I take photos of it. Plus in about an hour’s time, this thing disappeared completely, but all other major visible stars and planets were still there.
Any chance it was a supernova or other explosion of some kind? I think the odds are close to 0% because those last much longer than an hour, as far as I know.
I posted this on r/askastronomy but no answers there yet.
Mr_McGigglepants on
Jupiter I think
Dawhoda0 on
Think That’s the moon my dude
Allison1228 on
The triangle of similarly-bright stars near Capella and visible in the photo are called the “Kids”. Neither the moon nor Jupiter (nor any other planet) can ever be this far north, so it’s not those.
I would hypothesize that this is either a light source from below hitting the cloud layer, or else a foreshortened light pillar.
4 Comments
Context: Taken tonight (Feb. 15th) around 7:24PM Eastern time in Toronto, Canada (43 40 N, 73 23 W), looking straight up and a bit East. (Left side of the image is North, right side is South).
Taken with 5x optical zoom with my iphone so apologies for the poor quality.
Also, it looks yellowish here, but in real life it looked very faint and almost a deep dark red.
I thought it was the moon at first but doesn’t match that or any stars. Not Jupiter either, as this was quite a bit “North” of Jupiter in the sky, if that makes sense, and this was much wider/bigger, almost moon-sized. About an hour later it was completely gone.
The only thing that somewhat comes close in position is the star Capella which is the bright spot left of center. Even Jupiter kind of looks like a bright point when I take photos of it. Plus in about an hour’s time, this thing disappeared completely, but all other major visible stars and planets were still there.
Any chance it was a supernova or other explosion of some kind? I think the odds are close to 0% because those last much longer than an hour, as far as I know.
I posted this on r/askastronomy but no answers there yet.
Jupiter I think
Think That’s the moon my dude
The triangle of similarly-bright stars near Capella and visible in the photo are called the “Kids”. Neither the moon nor Jupiter (nor any other planet) can ever be this far north, so it’s not those.
I would hypothesize that this is either a light source from below hitting the cloud layer, or else a foreshortened light pillar.