satallite trail?

• by stonepenny

  #artefact... satellite top right?
  Image AAZ0001z88

  Posted August 3, 2014 10:37 PM

• by Puppyhogg

  Cool!

  Posted August 5, 2014 11:37 PM

• by CTidwell3

  Yes, the rotation of satellites makes some interesting patterns like this in image sets.

  Posted August 6, 2014 1:54 PM

• by Dr.Asteroid scientist, admin

  Wait til we catch an iridium flare - when an iridium satellite (a communications satellite, not related to the metal) is canted just right, you get a HUGE flash. There are several places on the web where you can see when one will be visible where you are. They're quite startling.

  Posted August 8, 2014 11:23 PM

• by MvGulik

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare#Iridium_flares

  With the short type flair ranging up to −8 magnitude. And the longer, but less bright, flair going up to −3.5 magnitude. It makes more sense to presume CSS would actively avoid them.

  YouTube video: Iridium flares in real-time (Nov 2014)

  Posted December 19, 2015 6:14 PM

• by MvGulik

  Digging around a bit more:

  • Iridium satellites are in low Earth orbit. (lower is faster orbital time)
  • The lower a satellites the less observable sky area(declination limit) there is to catch it.

  How fast: (track length)
  Geostationary satellite: 360/246060/2 = 7.5 acrmin/(30sec), ~70% of cell frame.
  Active Iridium satellite: 360/100.45957/2 = 1.792 deg/(30sec), ~63% of Master frame, ~10.5 cell frames.
  ISS: [410..330] km, or ~[93..91] min/orbit, ~[68%..69%] Master frame, 11 Cell frames.
  As ISS is in a even lower Earth orbit than Iridium satellites, its probably a very rare to a none-item on the CSS images too.

  Active Iridium satellite: 781 km = 100.45957 min/orbit.
  Spare Iridium satellite: 666 km = 98.04936 min/orbit.
  Master frame size(H/V): 2.86 deg = 171.60 arcmin.
  Cell frame size(H/V): 10.7 arcmin = 0.2 deg. (no cell overlap included!)
  General CSS image exposure time: 30 sec.

  Posted December 20, 2015 10:37 AM