October 10, 2019
In the time it took you to read this, the Earth moved another thousand miles through space. You are not standing still. You never have been.
Mid-Air Meteor and Milky Way
Birthday · October 10, 2019
A little universe, just for you
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APOD published October 10, 2019. Credit: Eric Wagner. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On September 24, a late evening commercial flight from Singapore to Australia offered stratospheric views of the southern hemisphere's night sky, if you chose a window seat. In fact, a well-planned seating choice with a window facing toward the Milky Way allowed the set up of a sensitive digital camera on a tripod mount to record the galaxy's central bulge in a series of 10 second long exposures. By chance, one of the exposures caught this bright fireball meteor in the starry frame. Reflected along the wing of the A380 aircraft, the brilliant greenish streak is also internally reflected in the double layer window, producing a fainter parallel to the original meteor track. In the southern sky Jupiter is the bright source beneath the galactic bulge and seen next to a green beacon, just off the wing tip.
Image credit: Eric Wagner