Description

Time: 12/26/2024 10:47PM EST

Location: Brooklyn, NY

40.716448, -73.967366

Brought my 300mm Tamron / Nikon D3300 out to the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to try and catch some "drones". I had seen two suspects earlier flying low near Barclay's Center that didn't appear on flightradar24 but only had the cellphone at the time so was itching to take out the glass.

At the waterfront, I spotted this intensely ruby red star over the Manhattan skyline near The NY Life Building (gold roof). I do a good bit of stargazing and never saw one so richly ruby, only reason it caught my eye. Though a very clear night for NYC, not many stars are actually visible. Orion was up overhead and behind me as I faced into Manhattan. I went back to scanning the sky for craft.

My position was fixed all night since I shot pressed into the corner of the waterside fence. I was watching all the air traffic; lots of planes en route to EWR, LGA, etc, but also lots of blinkenlights not on flightradar24. They were too distant for compelling pictures and I'm not sure how common it is for craft to be reported on that site so I didn't get too excited, but maybe someone will post otherwise...

Maybe 10 minutes later I noticed the red star seemingly hadn't budged. I'm an engineer with a decent eye for proportion so I snapped a picture out of curiosity, thinking I would have noticed the few degrees of rotation. Then back to looking for craft.

Another 15 minutes and I noticed it still hadn't budged. Meanwhile Orion had roughly doubled its belt-width away from this crane structure I had used as a reference, so I snapped another picture to check myself.

It was freezing out so I started walking home along the waterfront, keeping an eye on the ruby but it still didn't seem to move. Snapped one more photo from the other side of the park, about 27 min after the first one.

TL:DR a very boring sighting of a beautifully ruby red star that just didn't move. Attached photos with meta/timestamps, and some distance info. Please note my camera clock was 1:50:33 slow, and 2 days early. Guess it's been awhile since I set it. NY Life building was 3.34km from my position, with a 27m tall pyramid, so math can be done.