2MASS Facts

Survey Operations, Significant Operations Events and Notable Scans

Scans With Meteor Trails and Similar Objects

This file gives meteor trails picked up by the observers at the telescope and by random observations of others. See also Meteor Streaks Found From Visual Inspection of Coadds.

North
South

North

NightScan(s)Comments
970424all
51
Was labeled 970423n at first, so be careful!
Faint wide K-band only meteor trail in Frame 230.
970528253-color meteor (frame ~100).
970602103coadd 009: looks like airplane
97060580
84
Bright 3-color meteor (frame ~171).
3-color meteor (frame ~31).
97060929Faint meteor
97061446 Observed a strange object in frame ~138-140. short diagonal streak did not appear to be a galaxy. Did not move across frame as would be expected of a meteor. Was in several frames as telescope scanned. Slow moving satellite or Asteroid???
Visual inspection of coadd 138 shows line of "sources" near position RA = 226.692796 Dec = 20.972533. Line extends 1-2 arc-minutes NE-SW near western edge of coadd. Line is broken up into several small pieces, presumably by rejection algorithm in PIXPHOT. There are a number of detections along the line, some quite bright.
97061797Lots of Meteors observed on sky; might be some in data.
97062356Meteor in coadd 209
97062832VERY bright Meteor in frame 181, coadds 173 and 185. The trail is many pixels wide, and there is a faint trail to the west of the bright one which may be a ghost of the meteor itself. Trail is fairly continuous in J-and H-band images but at Ks-band is broken up into many disjoint pieces by the software.
97062923coadd 032 has two meteors. One is very diffuse and extends from one edge of the scan to the other. I don't understand why it's so broad -- it appears to have real extent on the image, as though we imaged something large (or close enough) to be resolved. Maybe it's just a warmly glowing bat? The second is a typical looking meteor trail at a different position angle. This one's brighter at H than at J and indiscernible at Ks (maybe because the software did a better job of cleaning it up at Ks???).
97070326Meteor
97070583Something bright came thru frame 230-240? Probably a bright meteor, caught image in corner of my when displayed on the screen.
97070850Meteor
970717~2203:28 - saw an AMAZING meteor, very slow, no faster than a plane, leaving an incredibly bright trail that lasted tens of seconds. SW to S about 30deg above horizon. (I've since found out that this was the space shuttle coming in). may not be in any scans.
97073138meteor streak on coadd 9. Davy Kirkpatrick nominates this coadd as the official "2MASS Artifact Poster Child". It's got the bright star, diffraction spikes, "lines", persistence, persistence-induced sky subtraction problems, and a partially zapped meteor trail. The only thing it doesn't have are holes!
971009131horizontal streak moving in all frames ~206-211. All the way across the field in all frames and moved with the stars. Very strange. Looked like a meteor. Horizontal diffraction spike from the secondary??? Some "cloud structure" moving in fields in all bands also.
97101311
20
Meteor? frame 197 or so
meteor? frame 42 or so
97101515Coadd 220 has meteor trail
97102379Meteor 3/4 field on frame 251-2
97110266
72
79
81
3-color meteor in frame ~54.
meteor
3-color in frame ~115
3-color in frame ~84
97110340
43
3-color Meteor frame ~238
bright 3-color meteor frame ~64.
97110456
70
2-color Meteor frame 69
2-color meteor frame 213
97110756Streak showed up in 2 consecutive frames ~40
97120118Apparent in coadds 32 and 42. It's a cal scan in probably cloudy conditions
97120514
36
meteor in coadd 9 at ra,dec of 21.149414, 29.960407
interrupted, nearly vertical streak in coadd 220 at x,y of 414, 948 and ra,dec of 157.395325, 13.136246 producing J=15.05 fid ell iso 21 ext. src.
971216152Streak in first 10 frames - more likely a reflected light artifact.
97121711
18
22
meteors
97121823
42
77
satellite
meteor
meteor
9801148
29
133
streak in coadd 21 at x,y of 168, 726
probably a faint streak in coadd 9 at x,y of 420, 302 at ra,dec of 93.639305, 29.810963; in coadd 91 at x,y of 40,489 at ra,dec of 93.759415, 27.976803; and vertical faint low surf bright streak/spike or block of something in coadd 209 at x,y of 108,830 and ra,dec of 93.736519, 25.377090
meteor
98012097meteor
98012512meteor in coadd 244
980304119
133
meteor in frame 189
satellite in frames 100-102
98030569meteor in frames 100-101
980310121there may be a meteor in frame 207
98032412bright meteor frames 222-223
98040156Meteor in frame 13
980403081
082
099
120
Meteors
980404012
079
081
091
093
095
105
124
meteor in frame 45
meteor in frame 99
meteor in frame 55
meteor in frame 252
meteor in frame 61
meteor in frame 249
meteor in frame 187
meteor in frame 229
98040632Meteor
98040825Meteor
98041094Meteor
98041139Bright meteor with J-Ks=1.81 in coadd 9
98041808
63
94
Meteor in frame 178
satellite?
meteor in frame 14
98041935Meteor in frame 7
98042842Meteor in coadd 21
98061825Meteor in frame 231 or 232
98061938Meteor
98062310Meteor in frame 127 or 128.
98070227Meteor in frame 231.

South

NightScan(s)Comments
98031928
55
60
78
87
possible faint meteor streak in coadd 233, at x,y of 259, 296 and ra,dec of 85.379868, -71.176125
broken trail in coadd 245
meteor streak in coadd 9 approx pos: 126.441292 -39.403210
meteor streak in coadd 21 at x,y 307.0 118.0
unusual-looking crooked streak in coadd 233, at x,y, of 326, 481 and ra,dec of 201.619415, -30.745554
98032813Nasty Meteor in coadd 233
98040177Meteor in coadds 9 and 18 cuts right through A1317 galaxy cluster.
98042518Meteor
980428132Meteor
9805207Meteor
98052648
65
Meteors
98052994Meteor
98062496Meteor



http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/2mass/facts/meteor_trails.html
Comments to: Tom Chester
Last update: 2 July 1998