Very bright International Space Station (Updated)

This evening I observed a magnificent pass of the International Space Station (ISS), with the Shuttle docked to it.

At about 40 degrees altitude in the west, during its approach, it shortly became very bright. A conservative estimate by me placed it at at least magnitude -5; Leo Barhorst observing the same pass from Almere, some 30 km North of me, estimated magnitude -6. After that, it slightly fainted, remaining bright but not as bright as it had been in the west.

Update: telescopic images by Quintus Oostendorp on SpaceWeather.com show that the brightening was due to the solar panels reflecting sunlight.

This brief brightening was captured by my camera. The Hyades are visible to the left, the Pleiades to the right.

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More flashing Iridium 33 wreckage, ISS, USA 200 and other high objects

As I wrote in my previous post with the image of USA 129 flaring, yesterday evening I hauled a rich batch of objects.

It started in twilight with a nice pass of the International Space Station (ISS). The image below shows it rising through Orion:

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Next I photographed passes of Lacrosse 3 (97-064A) and the NOSS 3-4 rocket (07-027B).

The wreckage of Iridium 33 (97-051C) was observed flashing again. Two photographs yielded five flashes, and like 3 days ago they fit a flash periodicity of 4.6 to 4.7 seconds. The timings were derived by measuring the flash positions astrometrically, and fitting the obtained positions to the most recent Iridium 33 tle. Here are the two images, with the flashes indicated:

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I also targeted some HEO (High Earth Orbit) objects again, this time experimenting with different camera settings. USA 200 (08-010A) was captured again, this time somewhat better than 3 days ago:

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I combined 4 of the images into an animated GIF, showing the movement of the sky and the satellite over a 1 minute period:



On the same image series I captured a piece of debris, USA 144 debris (99-028C), as a stray. In addition, I imaged another object in a Molniya orbit, USA 179 (04-034A) and the USA 198 rocket (07-060B) this evening.

USA 129 flaring

This evening I bagged a rich bag of objects. Amongst them was the Keyhole satellite USA 129 (96-072A), that treated me on a bright mag. -1 flare at 20;24:25 UTC (March 20) shortly after emerging from eclipse in Perseus. I captured the peak and descending brightness part on the image shown below.

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The light-curve is saturated near it's peak:

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More flashes from the Iridium 33 wreckage

Yesterday evening, after observing the exciting ISS-Shuttle duo pass (see previous post), I tried to observe flashes from the Iridium 33 wreckage (97-051C) again. Simone had provided some experimental predictions and asked for verification.

The Iridium 33 wreckage did flare: two very bright flashes (both around mag. -1) seen naked eye, and two fainter ones (+4?) found on a photograph. They were off from the experimental predictions, but still cool!

The two -1 naked eye flashed were observed at 17 March, 20:06:56 ± 1s and 20:07:02 ± 5sUTC. The two photographic fainter flashes/glints occurred at 20:07:15.7 and 20:07:20.4 UTC. The time between the latter two is 4.7 seconds, and the first two (the naked eye ones) within their timing uncertainties fit a similar 4.7 second period.

The image with the two faint photographic flashes is below:

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Iridium 33 wreckage photographed, with +4 glint

This evening was quite clear, and I decided to employ my new Canon EF 100/2.8 USM Macro lens to image a pass of the Iridium 33 main wreckage (97-051C). This lens has a bigger aperture than the EF 50/2.5 Marco I normally use, and hence is better for faint objects.

I was lucky and not only captured the very faint, irregular trail of the Iridium 33 wreckage: but also a short glint to mag. +4 at about 19:29:51 UTC (15 March), which I also observed with the naked eye.

The image is below. The inset shows the short glint, close to the end of the trail.

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An Iranian rocket (Safir 2 r/b)

Weather finally allowed me to observe one of the new Iranian objects from the February 2nd launch. It concerned the rocket booster from the launch, the Safir 2 r/b (09-004B).

Conditions were not perfect (somewhat hazy), but the rocket booster was well visible and I captured it on two images (see below). It showed a clear very slow amplitude brightness variation (amplitude >20 seconds), going between mag. +3 and near-invisibility for the naked eye (> +4). Around the brightness peak it gives a short bright glint. Both my photographs captured such a glint.

(update) Based on the two pictures, and assuming I didn't miss a glint in between them, the glint period is 33.25 seconds, with glints at:

7 Mar 2009 04:26:12.60 UTC
7 Mar 2009 04:26:45.85 UTC

Below the two pictures (as usual, Canon EOS 450D @ 800 ISO + EF 50/2.5 Macro @ F2.8), and the brightness profiles for these trails.

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Flares, strays and spy sats

The evenings of September 1st and 3rd saw a nice catch of satellites. My new camera system (Canon EOS 450D + EF 50/2.5 Macro) really is a sat magnet, which is also apparent by the number of strays captured in images with classified objects.

Objects imaged these nights include the KeyHole satellites USA 129 (96-072A) and USA 186 (05-042A), the SAR sats Lacrosse 4 & 5 (00-047A and 05-016A), and the Japanese sats IGS 1A and IGS 1B (03-009A and 03-009B).

IGS 1A is an example of a sat that would normally be beyond reach of my older camera system, but is well within reach now. The KeyHoles are captured much more easily now too.

Moreover, the quality of the positions obtained seems to be better. This is due to both the better image quality (less ambiguity in the start and end of the trails, as the images are much less noisy and the trails brighter), and to a much better, consistent timing behaviour of this camera.

Because of the more narrow field of the EF 50/2.5 Macro lens, I employ the laser (the same I use for pointing my telescope) to point the camera. Below is a photograph of what this looks like (although in reality the beam is less bright visually: this is the result of a 10 second exposure). Stars visible are from Cassiopeia and Perseus, with the double cluster visible just beneath the laser beam.

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On September 1st, I watched Lacrosse 5 (05-016A) together with my neighbour. It was nice and bright, and did it's infamous "disappearance trick" while just past the zenith. I had just been explaining this peculiar behaviour to my neighbour, so he got a nice demonstration!

Some nice flares were captured too these evenings. Below images show a mag. -8 flare of Iridium 72 on 3 Sep 20:15:29 UTC, and a brief mag 0 flare/glint by KeyHole satellite USA 129 (96-072A) at 20:33:34 UTC on the same evening. The curtain-like structure on the Iridium image is due to a moving patch of clouds.

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Several strays were captured as well, mostly spent Russian rocket boosters.

Lacrosses and a very fine USA 161 flare

Coming back from a date shortly after midnight of August 23-24, I noted it was very clear, with only occasional small cloud fields passing. This allowed me to photographically target the optical imaging Keyhole satellite USA 161 (01-044A) and the radar Lacrosses 4 & 5 (00-047A & 05-016A).

USA 161 briefly brightened in Cassiopia, featuring a very short mag. 0 flare at 23:44:09 UTC. I was so lucky to have the camera open at that time, resulting in this very fine flare picture (with below it, the brightness profile):

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IGS 1B flare, no Perseids

Yesterday was a strange evening. The day had been very clear, but with very strong wind (with gusts up to 100 km/h). In twilight, some clouds came in. It then got completely clouded, cleared again, and finally got clouded again, including a thunderstorm.

This all made me miss the Perseid meteor maximum. During the clearings however, I did manage to catch Lacrosse 2 (91-107A, in twilight), and the failed Japanese satellite IGS 1B (03-009B).

The latter was very bright (about +0.5) in the southeast and east. It then faded notably to +3, +3.5 just past east, and finally flared brightly to -1.5 in the northeast around 21:03:55 UTC.

I got three images of both satellites, totalling 11 positions (I dropped the faint trail end of the third IGS 1B image). The three IGS 1B images showed a second, very faint trail as well, which turned out to be the classified research MSX satellite (96-024A).

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Lacrosse 2 and a splendid -7.5 Iridium 5 flare

After an overcast day with rain, holes started to appear in the cloud cover in the evening. They allowed me to capture Lacrosse 2 (91-017A) in a blue twilight sky, followed by a splendid magnitude -7.5 flare of Iridium 5 close to Arcturus seen through thin hazy clouds.

Lacrosse 2 flared as well to mag. -1 at 21:34:42 UTC (Jul 5).

The top image below shows Lacrosse 2 in twilight. The second picture shows the Iridium flare, with Arcturus at left.

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Iridium flare, and a new camera

Last 1.5 month has seen very little activity here. Reasons behind that were a period with a stationary occlusal front bringing lots of clouds (and rain); a period where I was physically not entirely well; and the very late time at which at this time of the year it gets dark at my latitude (after local midnight only), which combined with my work schedule doesn't allow much observing mid-week.

Yesterday I did stay up until after midnight though. Because a new "toy" has arrived at Cospar 4353: a Canon EOS 450D DSLR camera, result of the investment of a tax return.

Below is an image I shot of a mag. -0.5 flare of Iridium 8 I shot last night. I used the EF-S 18-55 IS kit lens for it, at 18 mm F3.5 and ISO 800 with 15 seconds exposure.

Another lens, an EF 2.5/50 Macro which according to my friends yields superb results with astrophotography, arrives somewhere this weekend.

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Bright Keyhole Satellites

A late report on my observations of Wednesday evening 12 March.

After a strong gale in daytime the sky cleared in the evening, although fields of clouds still came and went. A near first quarter moon in the sky was no real nuisance.

Several objects were observed: NOSS-es 2-3 and 3-4 and the NOSS 3-4 rocket, plus two KeyHoles: USA 129 and USA 186.

USA 129 (96-072a) was bright again just after it emerged from eclipse. I observed it telescopically and obtained a photograph, yielding 4 positions in total. The visually obtained data dn the photographically obtained data agree well. The image is below and shows it near Castor and Pollux:

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The other Keyhole observed, USA 186, flared short and bright while the camera was open:

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96-072A was 0.5s early, 05-042A 0.5s late, 07-027A on-time, 07-027C perhaps some 0.3s early (I might have been a tad "fast"with the stopwatch on this one though), and the rocket 07-027B was 1.6s late. The 96-029 C & D components were both 0.4s early, the E component 0.2s early.

Yesterday evening (Saturday 15 March) the sky was too hazy to do serious satellite observations. I did shoot some nice moon images though. Below is an image of the craterland on the southern hemisphere (click it to see it at full screen, full resolution), plus a mosaic image constructed from 3 partial moon images. They were taken through my Meade ETX-70 with my Canon Digital Ixus 400 compact camera.

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Flaring KeyHole USA 129, and two productive evenings

The last two evenings saw a very clear sky again. Tuesday evening was cold and windy, yesterday evening a bit more comfortable. I obtained a rich batch of positions using both the telescope and the camera: 20 positions on 9 objects on the 26th, and 18 positions on 7 objects yesterday evening. These objects include KeyHoles USA 186 and USA 129, Lacrosse 4, the Lacrosse 5 rk, and various NOSS components.

Yesterday evening at about 20:38 UTC the KeyHole USA 129 (96-072A) flared while crossing Perseus. I was observing it through the telescope at that time and noted it was bright and then faded. I cannot give an exact peak time and magnitude however, as I was concentrating on obtaining positions. I had the camera open at that time, and it catched the onset of the flare very nicely:

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Here is the brightness profile:

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I also captured Lacrosse 4 (00-047A) on photograph, and observed it visually. It was on time, but definitely somewhat off-track.

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I tried in vain to spot the USA 193 debris pieces D and K last evening.

Finally, another picture of the KeyHole USA 129 (this time steady in brightness) shot on the evening of the 26th:

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Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-122, Progress-M62 flaring, and the ISS

After a sunny day, but with cirrus in the sky, the evening of February 8 was clear. This was the only evening that I had a chance to observe the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-122 before it docks to the International Space Station. The sequence was for ISS to make a near-zenith pass in twilight around 18:55 local time, followed by Progress-M62 on a similar trajectory ten minutes later, and finally the Space Shuttle STS-122 a quarter of an hour after that, entering shadow just below the zenith.

First the ISS passed, reaching magnitude -3 in the zenith:

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Next the Progress-M62 spacecraft leaving ISS filled with garbage made a pass. It spectacularly flared to mag. -2 in Andromeda (in the image below, M31 the Andromeda galaxy is just to the right of the trail), while the camera was open. The result is this very nice image:

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In this second image, it is back to it's normal brightness of mag. +1 again:

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15 minutes later the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-122 on its way to the ISS passed, reaching mag. -1 before going into eclips just below the zenith:

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A fine evening altogether! And although I have seen Space Shuttles pass before, this is the first time I catched one on photograph. The spectacular flare of Progress-M62 really made the evening though.

Lacrosse 5 flaring, and another Iridium flare

A gale today had blown the skies clear by dusk. I observed Lacrosse 5 (05-016A) and saw it flare to mag. 0 at 16:49:08 +/- 5s UTC. I catched it on photograph with an exposure starting only some 2 seconds after the flare peak: but a strong gust of wind rocked the camera tripod during the exposure, leading to a disrupted trail image.

I was more lucky half an hour later, when Iridium 7 (97-020B) flared to mag. -2.5. It resulted in a nice picture:

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I combined this evenings Iridium 7 flare picture with that of the Iridium 97 flare yesterday. It nicely shows how the geometry of the orbit and fixed attitude for the Iridium constellation makes them flare at more or less the same location:

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Iridium 97 mag. -2 flare

Short clearings amidst flying clouds allowed me to image this mag. -2 flare of Iridium 97 (02-031A) flaring at 17:25:57 UTC. A few minutes earlier, Iridium 36 (97-056C) failed to deliver a predicted flare however.

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Perseids and satellites from the new outpost "De Wilck" (Cospar 4354)

Last night was the inaugural night of my new secondary 'outpost' in the polder at De Wilck (see previous post here), now Cospar 4354. I spent some 3.5 hours there, observing the Perseid meteor shower, and satellites.

I arrived at 00:15 CEST (22:15 UTC). It was quite clear at that moment and I counted a limiting magnitude of +6.5 in the zenith. While setting up and waiting for two Iridium flares (Iridium 14 and 72) thin ground-fog appeared however, which would come and go the next 3 hours. As a result the limiting magnitude dropped between 0.1 and 0.4 magnitudes. The layer was thin, the top at perhaps 1.5 to 2 meter only. It didn't really hamper observations, even though the limiting magnitude dropped a bit.

I first observed two Iridium flares. Iridium 14 (99-032A) with a flare near -2 was the first. The flare peaked several seconds after the prediction. The second one, 3 minutes later, did peak on the predicted time and was much more spectacular. It concerned Iridium 72 (98-032B) flaring to mag. -7. Below is the scenic photograph that resulted (the ground-fog adds a misty atmosphere):

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Following this I started my meteor observing, interrupted by short breaks in order to catch Lacrosse 5 (05-016A), IGS 4A/R2 (07-005A) and the IGS 4r (07-005C).

Lacrosse 5 (05-016A) was nice and bright (from +2 to +1.5) when ascending in the southwest, and did it's infamous disappearance trick again at 22:54:35 UTC. Following this it shortly re-appeared at 22:56:08 UTC for only a few seconds at about mag. +3.5.

IGS 4A/R2 (07-005A), the Japanese radar reco satellite, was eagerly awaited as it appears to have manoeuvred a few days ago according to Pierre. It appeared out of eclipse at the Andromeda/Perseus border and I got 4 positions. Below image shows it in Northern Perseus:

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Thirty minutes later, the IGS 4 rocket (07-005C) was observed. It produced a short bright surprise flare to mag. -1 in Umi at 00:42:00 UTC, fading rapidly after that. Three positions were obtained.

A couple of strays were seen while observing meteors. A weird stroboscopically flaring satellite (multiple flashes per second) moved near alpha And at 23:15:00 UTC. Another satellite flared to -2 and shortly after that again to 0 at 00:26:00 UTC near Polaris.

This was my first meteor session since illness forced a stop 4 years ago, and it felt great to be out under a starry sky again, watching meteors. The location turns out to be adequate and quiet. And even with ground fog, conditions still were reasonable. Hence, I will certainly return more often here. I did note however that I am still not fit to do an entire observing night. Having started the meteor session at 22:35 UTC, I stopped at 1:30 UTC because I was starting to feel very tired (and still had a 25 minute bicycle ride to do).

2.28 hours of effective observing time with limiting magnitudes between +6.4 and +6.1 yielded me 130 meteors, 90 of which were Perseids. The meteor activity was nice, but they were rather faint, with not a single fireball among them. The kappa Cygnids were recognizable too, and I logged two delta Aquariids.

Before biking to De Wilck, I shot images of the 20:45 UTC ISS pass in twilight from my home (Cospar 4353). ISS was bright, around mag. -4 in the zenit. I also observed USA 193 (06-057A) but the trails on the two images are very marginal. They contain a faint stray too (which I still have to identify when I am less tired).

Update: the stray mentioned in the last sentence turns out to be 90-046B, the Kosmos 2082 rocket body

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Another -8 Iridium flare

Bright Iridium flares never are a bore, and the summer season with its long twilight at my latitude has plenty of them.

Last night at 22:56:24 UTC (Aug 4) I observed Iridium 21 (99-032B) flare brilliantly to mag. -8 in Ophiuchus. Like 31 July's Iridium 74 flare (which occurred in roughly the same sky position), it visually had a yellowish colour.

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It was a beautifully clear, warm night. In addition to Iridium 21, I also observed a nice bright pass of ISS, reaching mag. -3. Another object that never bores. On the classified front, I observed IGS 1B (03-009B) and the NOSS 3-4 Centaur rocket (07-027B) again.

While imaging IGS 1B, certain noises through an open window nearby reminded me that on a beautiful night like this, some other people also engage in their own particular pleasurable hobbies too... ;-)

As I was very tired, I stopped after observing and photographing the Iridium flare.

NOSS 3-4 Centaur rocket brightness variation

Last night (3-4 August) I observed the NOSS 3-4 Centaur rocket stage (07-027B) again over a large part of its trajectory. I obtained a number of images (yielding 10 positions), and they nicely show the varying brightness of the rocket stage due to its tumbling. It can be well seen in below series of snapshots, which were taken at approximately 1 minute intervals:

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note added 05/08: the variation is not in each sub-image, but between the images. Basically, the sequence for these four is: picture #1 bright trail; picture #2 faint trail; picture #3 bright trail again; picture #4 faint trail again.

Apart from 07-027B, I also observed IGS 1B (03-009B) and a mag. -0.5 flare of Iridium 74 (98-032D). Around the time of the Iridium flare however, cirrus clouds moved in and I stopped observing.

The NOSS 3-4 centaur rocket (07-027B): a nice new object

June 15 2007 saw the launch of NRO's NOSS 3-4 satellites. They belong to the new US Navy twin satellite constellation (the old NOSS-es were trio's) the purpose of which is to pinpoint the origin of shipping communications.

The payload couple (07-027A & C) and the last stage NOSS 3-4r Centaur rocket (07-027B) are now being tracked by amateurs. For me, the Centaur stage (07-027B) is the most interesting, as it is bright. It is also slow moving. And making zenith-passes near midnight for my station at the moment. Which all makes it a fine photographic target.

The object slowly tumbles, as is apparent from a very slow variation in magnitude. Over the course of a minute or so, it varies between mag. +4 and +1.5 on a zenith pass.

Last week I observed the object for the first time, on 3 different nights including last night (I observed a fine list of other objects from my regular observing program as well on these nights).

On the first two nights I was greatly hampered by drifting fields of cumuli but could nevertheless capture the object through gaps in the cloud cover. Last night was clear and I could follow it along a large part of its trajectory, the slow amplitude in brightness due to the tumbling being very apparent. Below three images show the object as captured on the nights of July 29-30, 30-31 and July 31-Aug 1.

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Last night the first (out of 3) image of the object suffered from an attempted counter-intelligence attack though ;-)

Frenkie, the cat of my neighbour, joined me at the courtyard that night and started to hug me and my camera tripod in the way cats do. As a result the first image I obtained contained a wobbled satellite trail and I did not measure it. I chased away Frenkie, as lovely as he is, and shot two more images one of which is shown above.

(Frenkie is now suspected to be back at his CIA headquarters, reporting to his commander, who carefully trained him: "Meooow, mission only partly accomplished").

I also had an Iridium flare path center coming almost exactly over my house last night. It concerned Iridium 67 (98-021F) and it flared brilliantly to at least mag. -8. The flare had a distinct yellow colour.

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The previous night also saw a nice (less bright: mag -1) flare of Iridium 64 (98-021C):

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