This photograph is of the phenomenon known as an Iridium flare. Basically, a flash of light occurs when one of the large flat antennas on an Iridium satellite briefly catches the Sun (even if it has already set for the observer). For more information, and to find out when such flares occur, go to //www.heavens-above.com/iridiumhelp.asp
I used a tripod, of course. I was worried that the flare would be obscured by the clouds, but fortunately it was particularly bright. Admittedly, this photo may not be especially interesting without realizing what it is a picture of, so I imagine it will probably not score well. Oh well.
Processing: Camera Raw, crop (~1/3 of frame), smart blur (to reduce noise), unsharp mask, resize
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Thanks for the comments! It honestly did not occur to me at the time that people would think of a meteor or a comet. Silly me! It was a 10-second exposure on a Canon EOS 20D, with a wide enough angle that the stars did not begin to streak. The high level of apparent grain, despite an original ISO of 400, was due to some drastic curves to bring out the relatively dark clouds; I was limited by the dynamic range because I was trying not to blow out the highlights of the Iridium flare. Thus, the effective ISO was probably more like 3200.
Very hard to capture this kind of shot! I'm not sure if it's just the clouds or something with the camera, but there are portions of the photo which look grainy. Other than that, nice job.
There seems to be a regularity of the noise in the clouds leaving streaking lines (was this taken, by chance, with a 20D?). I'm partial to astronomy, however, so this gets significant personal bonus points from me for that.
Very cool! Your stars look beautiful. Mine always look like little noise speckles on my picture, but yours look exactly like they are supposed to. Love that shooting star.
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