Something flying by the moon

Check out this guys video. He is showing off his dobsonian telescope with vids of the moon and Saturn (Saturn looks terrible, but I digress) and towards the end of the video at the 2:48 minute mark something black fly's past the moon. It is going incredibly fast and actually has some sort of flapping motion to it.

www.youtube.com...

On a side note, could anybody explain to me how to embed vid in my post?



[edit on 11-3-2009 by bronco73]

it could be a bird in the middle of the way, or it could have been the ISS like in this video:

www.youtube.com...

:p Or it could be the evil aliens

I think you called it right with the ISS. Pretty cool to see for sure. That dobsonian telescope the guy used was home made, and there are plans available on the net. I think I'm gonna give it a try.

reply to post by bronco73


You should. It's fun and really very easy to do. I would recommend buying your primary mirror though. They usually come with a secondary mirror, and you can get a good 4.5 inch mirror pretty cheap online. Try to find a sonotube for the 'barrel'. They're used for pouring concrete columns, and they're about $5.00

You'll see the moon really well, and with a good eyepiece you can see Saturns rings.

-WFA

Yep, I can't wait. I'm going to go with the 8" mirror set instead of 4.5 though. The complete kit including the main and secondary mirrors, spider, focuser, tube trim is on for $299 at e-scopes.cc. All I need is the lumber for the mount and the sonotube, and paint. for about 350 bucks I can have an 8"X48" reflector telescope, you can't beat that

First time I saw little black specs flying across the moon while looking at it through the telescope, I flipped. I didn't know what I was seeing, because it's kind of an illusion. They are sharp and in focus, like the moon, so it seems as if they are probably closer to the moon than to you and your telescope. After seeing them enough times, I finally noticed the flapping wings. So I concluded that they were probably either birds or bats flying around, as there were plenty of trees around for them to be flying to and from. It is strange though when you first see this.

reply to post by evilod


Yeah -- A bird or a bat seems like a very reasonable answer.

I suppose it could be an insect, but it was too much in focus to be close enough to the telescope to be seen if it was an insect. However, a bird or a bat a few hundred feet from the telescope would be enough in focus to be visible.

[edit on 3/13/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

Hmm some sort of flapping motion>? Maybe a UFo with wings.