Uploaded June 2012 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
A mystery streak appeared in my video of Venus transiting the Sun. This is a short segment of the video where the streak appears. I captured a still image of the moment and tried to zoom in on the location. Potential explanations include an insect in the optics of my telescope. But the motion looked too smooth and regular for an insect. I thought for a moment that it could be a meteor grazing the Sun but this motion would be unrealistically fast. A more likely explanation is that the video captured a terrestrial meteor streaking beside the Sun in the camera's field of view. Such a meteor could be hot and bright enough for the light to pass through the solar filter on the telescope.
A mystery streak appeared in my video of Venus transiting the Sun. This is a short segment of the video where the streak appears. I captured a still image of the moment and tried to zoom in on the location. Potential explanations include an insect in the optics of my telescope. But the motion looked too smooth and regular for an insect. I thought for a moment that it could be a meteor grazing the Sun but this motion would be unrealistically fast. A more likely explanation is that the video captured a terrestrial meteor streaking beside the Sun in the camera's field of view. Such a meteor could be hot and bright enough for the light to pass through the solar filter on the telescope.
