Observing Geostationary satellites from Indonesia

(click images to enlarge)

In July-August this year I visited Indonesia, travelling around on the island of Sulawesi and briefly stopping over on Bali on the way back to the Netherlands. It was a special trip, in which I searched for and found the house where my grandparents and father once lived, visited archaeological sites, and in general got  to see wonderful things and got to meet wonderful people.

One of the wonderful things was the night sky - especially at the Togian islands between North and central Sulawesi. A splendid Milky-Way from horizon to horizon (image above), the zodiacal light (image below), and my first good view of the Southern Cross (second image below).

During the stop-over on Bali, I did some limited satellite observations. Geostationary objects that are never visible from the Netherlands and which I normally only get to image using a 'remote' telescope, were the focus.

Unfortunately, the lens I had intended for that purpose, my EF 2.8/100 mm Macro USM, turned out to have been damaged during the trip, to the point that it had become optically clearly faulty. I therefore had to use a decidedly less suited lens, my EF 4.0-5.6/70-300 mm telezoom. As a result, only the brightest geostationary objects did register.

Among the objects that did register were the SDS satellites USA 227 (2011-011A) and USA 155 (2000-080A), the Mentor 2 r/b (1998-029B), and two objects that initially were UNIDS although one of them could later be identified.

The first one was a bright object just north of USA 155, which I earlier had also imaged using a 'remote' telescope. It almost certainly is the communication satellite Milstar 4.

The second UNID was an object in an 7.8 degree inclined GTO  orbit that was clearly trailing in the 30 second exposures (see image below). It does not match any known object. Astrometry and a very approximate orbit for this object are here.

FIA Radar 1 through the Pleiades, and Geostationary satellites in Orion

 click image to enlarge

The picture above (10s exposure taken with a Canon 450D and SamYang 1.4/85 mm lens) shows the classified military Radar reconnaissance satellite FIA Radar 1 (10-046A) sailing smack through the Pleiades last Friday.

Friday evening started clear, and I took the opportunity do so some observing. Using the SamYang 1.4/85 mm and the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm, I not only obtained the picture of FIA Radar 1 above, but I also targetted some geostationary satellites, imaging several of them in Orion.

Among the targets were the classified military communication satellite Milstar 5 (02-001A), the SDS data relay satellite USA 227 (11-011A) and the SIGINT satellite Mentor 2 (98-029A). Two other classified objects were captured as by-catch of these objects: the SIGINT satellite Vortex 6 (89-035A) and the object "Unknown 110623" (11-674A), an amateur-discovered object in GTO that is probably a spent rocket booster of a military launch. Note how it created a tiny trail in the image below as it was moving northwards through Orion.

The images below show these objects. Milstar 5, Vortex 6, UNK 110623 plus the two non-classified commercial communication satellites Eutelsat W2 (98-056A) and Intelsat New Dawn (11-016A) are all in the same 10-degree wide 85mm image. The stars of Orion's belt are visible in the top of the image, and Milstar 5 is close to the Orion Nebula. Orion's belt stars are visible at left in the Mentor 2 image as well.

click images to enlarge

 

In one of the other images taken last Friday evening, another commercial geostationary communication satellite, Intelsat 4 (95-040A) was captured while it briefly flared brightly at about 18:58:30 UTC (27 Jan).

The FIA radar and a number of geostationary objects (Mentor 2, Mentor 4) and the NOSS 3-3 r/b were imaged by me two weeks earlier as well, observations on January 14 and 15 which I had not reported here earlier. I also tried to relocate PAN, which recently has been relocated again but so far has not been recovered, although both Greg in South Africa and I in the Netherlands have tried.

On the NROL-27 mission patch, and the satellites' geographic position at 30.4 West

Yesterday, I posted my first image of NROL-27 / USA 227, the SDS satellite launched March 11th. It is located at 30.4 W, over the Atlantic.

With that knowledge on the geographic position of this geostationary satellite, and hindsight, I have started to wonder whether there is a connection to the design of the mission patch:



As discussed before, the patch features a Gryphon (mythical creature, half lion, half eagle): with a lion (and the constellation Leo, the lion) between its legs, and reaching for an eagle (with the constellation Aquila, the eagle).

Realizing the eagle could be a metaphor for the USA, I suddenly realized the lion could be a metaphor for Africa.

This is interesting given the position and role of USA 227 / NROL-27 over 30.4 W, the Atlantic. In this position it connects Africa, to it's east, with the US, to its Northwest.

Is this what is depicted in the patch: the Gryphon (NROL-27) reaching from Africa to the US?
This would be the role of an SDS satellite: relaying data from reconaissance sats over Africa towards the USA (see also here).

If not intentional, than this is a very cool coincidence.

USA 227/NROL-27 at 30.4 W: a Gryphon in Hydra

NROL-27, a secret NRO payload that is probably an SDS communication satellite (see also here) was launched on 2011 March 11th.

On April 6th, Peter Wakelin made the first observations of the new object. The orbit (by Ted) places it at 30.4 W, over the mid-Atlantic in front of the Brasil coast, in a 5 degree inclined orbit, placing it low in the southwest for me, at an altitude of about 20 to 25 degrees.

click map to enlarge

Yesterday evening was a very clear evening, and based on Ted's preliminary orbit I photographed it, using the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180 mm.

Below is (a part of) the image. The object, at that time a few degrees northwest of alpha Hydra, is bright and shows up well:

click image to enlarge

Launch patches for NROL-27 can be seen in an older post here.

Note added 12/04/2011: a follow-up discussing a possible relation between the NROL-27 mission patch symbology and the satellite's geographic location can be found here.