Flaring Keyholes in a moonlit sky, and a BWGS meeting

The "Supermoon" of yesterday was not my only observational target. The sky was very transparent, and hence even with this full "supermoon" low in the southeast, conditions were fine for satellite observations.

I imaged two Lacrosses and two KH-12 Keyholes: Lacrosse 3 (97-064A), Lacrosse 5 (05-016A), USA 129 (96-072A) and USA 186 (05-042A). In one of the images, Rubin 4/SL-8 (03-042B) was captured as a faint stray.

Both of the Keyholes and one of the Lacrosses (Lacrosse 3) flared: KH-12 USA 129 did so while the camera was open, yielding the picture below (note the Hyades at the bottom):

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Flare times:

USA 129: 20:29:08 UTC
USA 186: 20:14:40 UTC
Lacrosse 3: 19:52:40 UTC

Below images show Lacrosse 3 ascending and brightnening over the chimney (with Canis minor in the upper right corner: this was just before it flared), and Lacrosse 5 descending through the tail of the Big Dipper (the fuzzy arc is a reflection from a nearby lightsource):

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These observations were all done just after returning from a trip to Belgium, where we had a meeting of the BWGS (Belgian Working Group Satellites). It was a small but nice gathering (six attendants, including this author). Below some pictures showing me (left) and Leo Barhorst (right): and BWGS president Bram Dorreman (all pictures taken by Koen Geukens):

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On the agenda were amongst others the future of flash observations; the observations of flaring geostationary satellites earlier this month; while I did a very short photo-presentation on the recent PAN relocation story (see also here). Our host that day was Koen Geukens.

BWGS meeting, 26 September 2010, and 2010 observations so far

I. The BWGS meeting

On September 26, 8 members of the BWGS (the Belgian Satellite Workgroup, which also includes the active Dutch observers) including this author gathered in Brugge at the home of Tristan Cools for the annual BWGS meeting. As usual the meeting was quite informal, with a few small talks and a lot of banter.

from left to right: Tristan Cools (B), Kurt Dequick (B), Kurt Jonckheere (B), Koen Geukens (B), Bram Dorreman (B/NL), Wim Holwerda (NL), Leo Barhorst (NL). Not in the picture, the author (NL).

BWGS chair Bram Dorreman giving a presentation on the new PNAS database

Bram Dorreman did a presentation on the newly established PNAS (Photometric Notes on Artificial Satellites) that will complement the PPAS database of flash records. The PNAS will record 'anecdotal' observations of single flares and usunusual brightness behaviour of satellites. As an example, Bram showed how he cooperates with meteor observer Jean-Marie Biets to identify satellite flares captured by Biets' all-sky meteor fireball camera, and includes these data in the new PNAS.

The author did a presentation on the techniques he uses for photographic position determination (and occasionally brightness behaviour determinations) on classified satellites and other objects of interest. As part of it, he also presented some statistics of the past 9 months of observations (see more below), as an illustration of the results gathered.

Kurt Jonckheere next showed photographs and video of his trip to Florida in April, where he and his family watched the night launch of Space Shuttle STS-131. He shot some marvelous imagery of the afterglow of the exhaust plume. Following this, Tristan showed some footage of a Soyuz launch (carrying Belgian astronaut Frank de Winne) from Baikonur some years ago.

Koen Geukens presented a number of video segments of his trip to Peënemunde, the WWII center of German early rocket development (including the V-1 and V-2). The place where once Wernher von Braun's desk stood, is now a wilderness of trees and rubble.

Kurt Dequick followed with some images of French V-2 and V-1 launch sites.


II. Some statistics of the past 9 months

As mentioned, I presented something on my positional observations. As part of it, for illustration purposes, I ran some quick statistical overviews of my observations this year so far.

from January to the 3rd week of September 2010, I produced 872 position determinations, 774 of these on classified objects (and the rest on accidental non-classified strays captured in my imagery, or special interest objects such as Space Shuttles and Progress spacecraft). It concerned positions on 34 different classified objects plus 58 non-classified objects.

Of the classified objects, 28 were payloads, 4 rocket boosters, and two where it is unclear what they are (for example the USA 144 "decoy", 99-028C). It concerns payloads and r/b in LEO (21), MEO (4), HEO (6) and GEO (3).

Below diagram gives a breakdown of the number of observed nights (evenings, usually) and the number of position determinations done per month. My hollidays in August are well visible as a pronounced dip in the statistics.

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Below shows, just for fun, an RA/DEC plot of all positions gathered. My summer observations of geostationary objects are visible below 0 degrees declination: the clustering of positions at various spots elsewhere in the diagram is due to me preferably pointing the camera to areas with easily identifiable grouplets of bright stars.

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Below is a list of the classified objects observed these first 9 months of 2010:

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The Lacrosse 5 "disappearance trick", and a BWGS meeting

On Saturday 26 September, a small number of BWGS satellite observers gathered at the house-boat of Leo Barhorst (Cospar 4253) at Almere. Present were, besides Leo Barhorst, BWGS president Bram Dorreman and me. A number of active BWGS observers alas could not come, hence the rather small group this time.

In the afternoon we exchanged some information, looked at some software, my collection of "black space program" mission, launch and unit patches, and Leo's collection of space-related postal stamps. I demonstrated how I astrometrically measure my satellite photographs for positions, and how I get brightness curves from an image.

The plan was to try some joint observations that evening (we could stay for the night at Leo's boat), and as it was sunny, we started preparations in the early evening. I took below photograph of Leo (seen frontal) and Bram (seen on the back) while they were making their preparations

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The sky was not perfect (and would progressively deteriorate later that evening). From a small green a few tens of yards from Leo's boat, we started by watching Iridium 80 flare to mag. -3.5 close to epsilon Cyg in the eastern wingtip of Cygnus. I took the picture below, a 10-second exposure with the EF 100/2.8 Macro USM:

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Immediately after that I rushed to re-aim the camera and capture the USA 144 decoy (99-028C) passing close to vega in the next minute. Predictions had put the track just west of Vega, and while Bram and Leo were watching there with binoculars I made a series of images. Strangely enough, Bram and leo did not pick it up: and the reason was, after a look at my photographs, that it passed east of Vega, not west! After a puzzled "huh?!?" it dawned upon me: the coordinates of my prediction software were still set on my Leiden locality!

Next up were the objects related to the recent launch of a Russian Meteor weather satellite. Bram and Leo indeed picked one up with their binoculars.

Shortly after that, we watched a nice pass of the SAR Lacrosse 5 (05-016A) with the naked eye. As we watched it, it did it's infamous "disappearance trick" again. It did so during an exposure, that captured the quick loss of brightness very well. It was the first time I imaged the phenomena with my Canon EOS 450 DSLR. It yielded this very nice diagram of the brightness variation (constructed from two images):

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Note how quick the brightness drop is (it takes a mere 4 seconds) and how sharp the turnpoints in the diagram are.

Next up were passes of the KH-12 optical reconnaisance Keyhole USA 186 (05-042A), which briefly attained naked eye visibility and was of course photographed; and the NOSS 3-3 duo (05-004A & C) which were faintly visible to the naked eye as they crossed Cygnus, and yielded two very fine pictures, one of which is below:

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Note the difference in brightness between the A and C components. (note: I mistakenly labelled the C component as 'B' in the image...)

After this, Leo and Bram observed the NOSS 3-3 rocket, which is a flasher. As the sky quality rapidly deteriorated, we called it quits after that and went inside to reduce the observational data.

It was nice to meet and observe together. Leo was a perfect host, and his cat Bankie kept my feet warm later that night.