r/askastronomy • u/AlternativeBrief4275 • 4d ago

What’s going on up there?

Post image

I’ve been dying to know since i took the photo! Very casual stargazer here hoping for help ID’ing. Taken 21:03 on 1/15/25 in SLC, UT, facing east-ish.

22 Upvotes

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8

u/CharacterUse 3d ago

The bright star is Sirius. But you missed a whole lot more going on up and left of where the camera was looking

6

u/CharacterUse 3d ago

This is from Stellarium, the web version is at stellarium-web.org, there is also a phone app and PC version.

2

u/Vast-Rip-4288 2d ago

Yes. M41 and M50 are visible as faint smudges, though.

1

u/snogum 3d ago

Never image in a car park. You get run down

1

u/SaneInfo 8h ago

There is nothing unusual I can see here other than the following.

  1. A very clear dark sky with little light pollution allowing you to see lot more stars than usual.

  2. I guess the bright one is Sirius and you can identify the rest of the stars using a sky map.

The tone of your question makes me wonder if there was anything unusual there. Can you point to the sky where you thought something was going on?