Observing Geostationary Satellites from Leiden and Arizona

While the focus was on LEO and HEO satellites earlier in October, I primarily targetted Geostationary satellites last week. Both from my own locality with my own equipment, as well as by means of a "remote" telescope in Arizona.

The two images below were taken from Leiden (the Netherlands) in the early evening of October 23, using my own equipment (Canon EOS 450D + Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm).

They show the enigmatic, frequently re-locating PAN satellite (09-047A: see Dwayne Day's article here) and the SIGINT (eavesdropping) Mentor 4 (USA 202) satellite (09-001A), as well as a few commercial geostationary telecom objects: Hellas-sat 2 (03-020A), Thuraya 2 (03-026A) and Paksat 1R (11-042A).

click images to enlarge

As can be seen, PAN and Hellas-sat 2 are a very close pair now, so close that I am not actually 100% sure which one is which (the westernmost one or rightmost one is likely PAN). As can be seen in comparison to this post from May, it has relocated again, from 45.0 to 38.9 E - it did so in July, when I was on hollidays.

Somewhat earlier the same week, when the sky in Leiden was overcast, I took refuge by hiring a "remote" telescope again. This time not the 61-cm of SSON, but the 37-cm Cassegrain of Winer Observatory (MPC 857) in Sonoita, Arizona, USA. While a smaller instrument, this telescope has a larger FOV which is good if the satellite is a bit off from predictions, and allows te satellite to be captured on more than one image when a 3-image run is done. Also, it is cheaper to rent.

Targets were two "usual suspects": the enigmatic Prowler (90-097E: see story and links in my previous post here) on October 17 and 21 and the SBIRS-GEO 1 (11-019A) on October 21:

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Note: because the telescope follows the stars, the satellites become trailed, unlike the images shot from Leiden which are from a stationary tripod (hence the stars trail, but the satellites not).

A few non-geostationary satellites were tracked the past two weeks as well. They include the STSS Demo 1 & 2 (09-052 A & B) and the USA 89 r/b (92-086C) on October 22, and the HEO ELINT & SBIRS platform USA 184 (06-027A) on October 15.

Hollidays, Ötzi, a Deluge, and USA 179 (SDS 3-3)

For most of the month August, I have been out of the country, to Northern Italy. With my GF I visited Bozen/Bolzano in the Italian part of Tirol, to see Ötzi the glacier-mummie; then made a 2-week backpack hike through the Dolomite mountains, going from refugio (mountain hut) to refugio; and next visited Verona and Venice. In all, a very fine 3-week hollidays!

Shortly after getting back, I managed some limited observations on August 24: USA 186 and the USA 179 r.

Two days later, on the 26th of August, a deluge hit my country including Cospar 4353. An incredible amount (for our country) of precipitation fell: in places thsi amounted to over 140 mm, over 2 times the monthly amount, in only a few hours time. Especially in the east of the country, this led to floods and associated water troubles.

At Cospar 4353, some 60 mm of rain is the monthly normal for August. On the night 25-26 and morning of the 26th, in just 18 hours time, 78 mm of rain was recorded by the pluviometer of my weather station. Most of it fell in an hour time around 9:00 am.

click diagram to enlarge

The days following this deluge, were mostly bad with clouds and rain. I managed to resume observations on the evening of August 30th, taking advantage of a short but bright clearing. Target was USA 179 (SDS 3-3), a US military communication satellite in a Molniya orbit.

As it turned out, the satellite was quite off in position compared to (at that time) a 25 days old elset. It was 3.4 degrees south of the predicted position:

click images to enlarge

image made with Heavensat

I followed the object over the next nights, 31 Aug, 1 Sep and 2 Sep, in order to provide data for an orbital update. On August 31, the object was again snagged during a short but bright clearing, this time in Cepheus and closer to it's apogee. Below is a single image and a stack of the 4 images obtained:

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Compare the single images of 30 and 31 August, and to the stack of the August 31 to the stack of the September 2 images, all shown here at the same scale (full pixel resolution).

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The difference in angular speed at different parts of it's orbit is well visible.

Other objects imaged these nights were the STSS Demo 1 + 2 objects; MSX, IGS 1B, and on Sept 1 the Russian Progress-M 06M cargoship that had just been decoupled from the ISS the previous day.

Last observations of the year, and 2009 at a glance

December 2009 saw a lot of clouded sky, a few clear frosty skies, and lots of snow (for our country at least). After my December 6th observations (see previous post) I observed on December 13th (under modest conditions) and December 28th (under good conditions).

Targets imaged were the HEO objects USA 179 (04-034A), USA 184 (06-027A) and USA 198 (07-060A), and the STSS Demo objects (09-052A & B); and the LEO objects Lacrosse 2 (91-017A) and Lacrosse 5 (05-016A).

These are probably my last observations for this year, as today is overcast and tonight will see fireworks. So, what did 2009 bring on the observational front?

2009 was a good year. I observed on 77 nights, obtaining a total of 953 positions (8 visually, 945 photographically). They were spread over the year as follows:





These observations concern 32 different classified objects (both payloads and rocket boosters), plus a number of special-interest non-classified objects such as Space Shuttles, GOCE, and the Iridium 33 wreckage:

click image to enlarge list

Just for fun, I have also plotted all obtained positions on an RA/Declination map:

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The clustering in certain positions is because I tend to select sky areas with easily recognizable bright star patterns. This helps easy aiming of the camrea, and it also speedens initial star identifications during the astrometric reduction of the images.

STSS Demo 1 (USA 208) passing the Andromeda nebula

After observing it visually through the ETX-70 2 days ago (see my report here), I had some idea that the STSS Demo 2 (09-052B) and it's twin STSS Demo 1 (09-052A) were actually bright enough to be in raneg of my camera with the EF 100/2.8.

So I tried this evening, and with succes: both objects were captured. Below is one of the images, a nice picture showing the STSS Demo 1 (USA 208) passing close to M31, the Andromeda galaxy.

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Some time ago I obtained the launch patches of this twin mission (STSS is an acronym for Space Tracking and Surveillance System):