My friend Phil sent me these pictures he took using a Canon D60 through a small wide angle telescope. He sent me these pictures to ask what the streaks are. My best guess is a geosynchronous satellite. To verify this, I was thinking of first of all plotting the direction of the trail. Assuming they are in order, the satellite should track almost exactly east west. A little head scratching math should indicate its orbital velocity (assuming a circular orbit).

Anyway, from his letter to me…

I was shooting some wide-field photos of Orion’s belt
about 7:45 tonight and four or five of them show this
strange streak. It seems like it’s moving awfully slow
for a satellite but I can’t imagine what else it could
be.

Please see the two attached full rez crops from the
(much larger) original jpegs taken with a Canon D60,
through my Celestron Rich Field 80 piggy-backed on my C8.
These are totally unenhanced at the full pixel rez of
the full frames. As I said, the duration of the streaks
is 30 sec.

Satellite? Asteroid? Whaddaya think?