Line up

I haven't done any astrophotography with my Nikon L4 recently. The weather hasn't been very cooperative, and I haven't always been in the right place at the right time. I didn't see Monday morning's occultation of Venus by the Moon - the relevant part of the sky was a sea of blinding white thanks to moisture in the air. I saw Monday evening's Saturn - Moon - Venus lineup from my car on the way home from my friends' place in the Poconos, but by the time I got home they had all settled into the thin clouds just above the horizon. Tuesday night was rained out. But last night, I got to see the lineup of the Moon, Regulus (the brightest star in Leo), Saturn, and Venus.

The Moon, Regulus, Saturn, and Venus, June 20, 2007

I decided to get some pictures of Jupiter in Scorpius. They didn't come out as well as I had hoped, and after trying to overlay the star chart of Scorpius from Heavens Above onto my photo, I realized that the bright red thing I had assumed was Jupiter was actually Antares! (UPDATE 7/1/07: No, I was right the first time. The bright thing is Jupiter. Antares is lower and to the right, and is only visible in the enlarged version.) It's visible to the left of center in this photo:

Scorpius, June 20 2007, 9:58 PM

Something else is pretty obvious in that photo, too, just above the center of the photo. I have no idea what it is - a lens flare caused by the lights from my neighbor's house, or some artifact of the camera that has never showed up until now? Here's an enlargement of the object:

Tumbling satellite? June 20, 2007 9:58 PM

Assuming this is not an artifact of the camera, what the heck is it? A UFO? Perhaps aliens have taken to flying biplanes? I think the most likely explanation is that this is a tumbling satellite or other piece of space debris, and my several-seconds exposure caught it at the right time to see two flashes from the center portion, while the extremities reflected sunlight the entire time. But Heavens Above doesn't list any satellites cutting across the front of Scorpius at 9:58 PM on June 20, 2007. And would any satellite (aside from the International Space Station, maybe the Hubble Space Telescope, and possibly the Space Shuttle) ever appear that large in a photo? Or could this even have been a very distant airplane, with lights on its wingtips and a flashing light on its tail? Whatever it was, I didn't see it with my naked eyes, even after I noticed it in the image on the camera's screen. Anybody have any better ideas?

Update, 11:31 PM 6/21/07: Yeah, on further consideration, I'm pretty sure that's just a plane. Wingtip running lights, red and blue strobes, all in a 3-to-5-second time lapse. Oh, well.

Title reference: "Line Up" by Elastica. Go buy it.