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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Lacrosse 2 manoeuvred, and first results with the EF 50/2.5 Macro lens

Last two weeks I took several images in order to calibrate the timing of the new Canon EOS 450D camera. I finished the calibration just in time to catch positions of the SAR satellite Lacrosse 2 (91-017A), which manoeuvred twice last week. As usual, this happened with perigee on the equator.

The new Canon EF 50/2.5 Macro lens arrived as well. As promised by my friends who recommended it, it is a superb lens not only for macro photography, but also for astrophotography.

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Above are two examples of images I shot with the lens: one macro image of a seven-spotted ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) on lavender in the Cospar 4353 garden; and an astrophotography result, obtained from Cospar 4353. The latter shows the area around Deneb in Cygnus, including the North America nebula. It is the result of a 'stack' (digital sum) of 98 individual exposures of 10s each (mimmicing a 16m20s exposure).

Combined with an ISO 800 setting on the camera, the EF 50/2.5 Macro goes much deeper than my previous Ixus camera's did, catching fainter objects. Last Tuesday and Wednesday nights, this was immediately apparent from the number of strays catched during satellite photography and a short astrophotography session.

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The lens (with 50 mm and a factor 1.6 equivalent to an 80 mm lens on an analogue camera) has about 25 degrees FOV, which is a 50% smaller FOV than I previously used, so pointing the camera correctly needs more attention. But the results are superb. On the stars, I get astrometric standard deviations of only 5" (5 arc seconds) typically. The satellite positions have a larger uncertainty, as they are also influenced by the timing accuracy.

The amount of noise produced by the EOS 450D sensor is much less than that by the Ixus camera's, and that pays off. While (unlike the Ixus) the camera does not standardly employ a noise reduction routine (which with the Ixus I suspected to sometimes "eat" part of the trails), the satellite trails stand out much better in the background, with less ambiguity as to where the trail ends.

Below are two images of last night: a single shot of Lacrosse 2 (91-017A), and a stack of two images taken shortly after each other. Relative to the pre-manoeuvre orbital elset (epoch 08177.99486268) the sat was 35 seconds early last night, on June 30 it was 2 seconds.

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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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Iridium flares

Weather and other occupations didn't allow me much observing the past two weeks. I did get a few positions last week, on the 8th and 11th. On the 8th it were Lacrosse 2 (91-017A) and three of the NOSS-2-3 components (96-029C, D & E). Yesterday (the 11th) it wereIGS1A and 1B (03-009A & B).

I also made a few photographs of Iridium flares with the new Ixus 75 camera. Two of them are shown below. So far, it seems my new camera has a timing lag of 0.9 seconds. Unlike the Ixus 400, the 10 second exposure setting really is 10 seconds.

The Ixus 75 images are much sharper than those of the Ixus 400. I have some suspicion though that they show less faint stars than the Ixus 400 images.

Below are two Iridium flare pictures (Iridium 43 on the 8th, and Iridium 98 on the 11th). Also given are their brightness profiles.

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ATV-1 "Jules Verne" and ISS chasing each other in the sky

This evening was clear, albeit with occasional patches of low clouds passing. I observed the KeyHole USA 186 (05-042A) and the NOSS duo's 3-3 (05-004A & C) and 3-4 (07-027A & C).

The highlight of the night were however the European cargo ship ATV-1 "Jules Verne" and the International Space Station ISS chasing each other in the sky. They made a pass at 22:12 local time (20:12 UTC) going into eclipse close to the zenith. The ATV lead the ISS by about 15 seconds in time. It was about mag. +1, while the ISS was about -3 to -4.

I started the camera a bit too early and as a result the early part of the ISS trail was outside the image. Yet the image is still nice:

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The reddish blot is a wisp of cloud, and stars visible are in Gemini, with Castor and Pollux.

The camera I used by the way is a new one, which I purchased last Sunday. It hence still needs to be calibrated. Like my previous camera it is a compact camera from the Canon Digital Ixus family again, but a newer improved model: the Canon Digital Ixus 75. It is a 7.1 megapixel camera (my older camera was 4.0 megapixel).

Earlier in the evening I photographed a -2 flare of Iridium 12 with it:

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Two satellite fuel tanks survive re-entry

Two recent finds of satellite fuel tanks - both of carbon-wrapped titanium fuel tanks from the Atlas Centaur upper stages of two US military satellite launches probably - are in the news at the same time. One came down a week ago in Brasil, the other was found in the autumn of 2007 in Australia.

The Brasilian tank (source):




The Australian tank (source):




The Brasilian fuel tank is very likely part of the upper Centaur stage of the rocket that launched a US military communications satellite (Global SATCOM, 2007-046B) in October 2007. The Australian fuel tank could be a part of the upper Centaur stage of the rocket that launched another military satellite, USA 138 (1998-016A) in 1998.

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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ATV-1 "Jules Verne" nice and bright

Against my expectations, it was clear this morning, allowing me the chance to observe the 04:21 UTC pass of the newly launched ATV-1 Jules Verne (08-008A), the first European cargo ship on its way to the ISS. It was launched last Saturday on Sunday night from Kourou by an Ariane 5 rocket. ATV stands for Automated Transfer Vehicle.

I watched it coming out of earth shadow at about 50 degrees altitude in Ophiuchus around 04:21:10 UTC. It was nice and bright, reaching mag. +0.5.

I shot below photograph, unfortunately suffering from some lens reflections.

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USA 129, and an unknown object

Friday evening was clear, albeit with occasional wisps of cirrus traversing the sky. Back home from my new job in which I started last week, I could do some observing again.

First I tried to observe two predicted zenith passes of USA 193 debris, but didn't spot anything.

Next target was Lacrosse 3 (97-064A). I selected a star field close to beta Umi near RA 15:00, dec +76 45', through which Lacrosse 3 would pass at 19:46:30 UTC (March 7).

Just before the expected appearance of Lacrosse 3 in the FOV, suddenly a very fast object of about mag. +7.5 crossed through the lower part of the (4 degree) FOV. It moved west-east and roughly parallel to the predicted Lacrosse track. It was very fast, maybe even moving as fast as 1.5 degree/second. It caught me completely by surprise, so it took me some time to realize what happened and try to fix an approxiate time. With a plus-minus of say 20 seconds in time, the resulting position (in IOD format) is about:

99999 08 999A 4353 G 20080307194600000 17 75 1511063+756260 36 S

Given the fast speed and general direction of movement, my thought was immediately that this could be a piece of USA 193 debris. It doesn't match any of the published catalogued debris pieces though. And according to Ted, it would be somewhat too far from the expected plane of these fragments. So the object remains unidentified.

Some 30 seconds later Lacrosse 3 sailed into the FOV.

Other objects tracked that evening were all of the NOSS 3-4 objects (07-027A, B and C) including the Centaur rocket, the NOSS 2-3 objects (96-029C, D and E). I also observed two of the KeyHole photo-reconnaissance satellites: USA 129 (96-072A) which initially was bright, and USA 186 (05-042A). They were all early, especially USA 129.

I catched the latter on photograph too, while it crossed close to Castor and Pollux in Gemini, being about mag. +0.5:

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All in all, 16 positions were logged on 10 objects this evening, two of which were camera positions, the rest was visual. The visual position obtained for USA 129 and the two camera positions agree well.

Interesting visitor

An interesting visitor in the webstats today:

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I wonder what their interest in the Lacrosse sats is....

NOTAM warns aircraft of decaying USA 193 debris (updated again 02/03)

John Locker brought a new chapter to the attention in the ongoing USA 193 soap story, by pointing to a NOTAM released by the US FAA here on the Satobs list. The text of this NOTAM:

8/5536 - SPECIAL NOTICE .. THIS NOTAM REPLACES FDC 8/5501 DUE TO ADDITION OF CONTACT NUMBER. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL 0803092300 UTC. AIRCRAFT ARE ADVISED THAT A POTENTIAL HAZARD MAY OCCUR DUE TO REENTRY OF SATELLITE USA-193 DEBRIS INTO THE EARTHS ATMOSPHERE. FURTHER NOTAMS WILL BE ISSUED IF MORE INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. IN THE INTEREST OF FLIGHT SAFETY, IT IS CRITICAL THAT ALL PILOTS/FLIGHT CREW MEMBERS REPORT ANY OBSERVED FALLING SPACE DEBRIS TO THE APPROPRIATE ATC FACILITY TO INCLUDE POSITION, ALTITUDE, TIME, AND DIRECTION OF DEBRIS OBSERVED. FAA HEADQUARTERS, AIR TRAFFIC SYSTEMS OPERATIONS SECURITY, 202-493-5107, IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN

This is weird. I cannot think of any real danger to aircraft by the decay of small fragments of USA 193 debris. Most will burn up well above the flight altitude of aircraft. Those that don't, will be rare and not a real concern in my humble opinion. Moreover, hadn't "they" told us the danger was gone after they successfully shot it to bits?

The Public Relations behind this whole operation is bizarre, from start to end. I am at a loss to understand what is going on behind the scenes here. It is becoming a soap story.

Reading the NOTAM carefully, it seems actually to be more about trying to get information about where something might have come down, then that it really concerns the "danger" to aircraft. The latter merely appears to be the "vehicle", just as the hydrazine "danger" was in the argument to shoot USA 193. Perhaps some component wasn't that destroyed after all and they are after it. And no, that will not be the hydrazine tank.

UPDATE: Strike that last remark. One of the commenters to the topic on the Bad Astronomy blog here has managed to dig up the actual date of issue of this NOTAM. That appears to be Feb 20th, so before the ASAT strike. Which means it is clearly not the result of a debris-analysis made after the ASAT strike.

Still the issueing of this NOTAM remains weird. It does indicate that for some reason, they want to keep track of where debris comes down. Something among it has their interest.

Oh dear: that "they" sounds awfully conspiratory, isn't it? I apologize....and assure you I don't wear tinfoil hats... ;-)

Debris of shot spysat USA 193 endangers and delays new spysat launch

An interesting article has appeared on space.com. NROL-28, the launch of a new spy satellite by the NRO, has been delayed because the NRO doesn't want to risk it being hit by debris fragments of the destroyed spy satellite USA 193.

Meanwhile, 12 more orbits have been released for additional fragments of USA 193 besides those released earlier.

In my post here on the latter issue, I mentioned I could not provide graphics of the orbits. Since then, such graphics have appeared on a number of other websites, so I feel I do no harm in doing so too as it already has become public domain. The following pictures show the orbit distribution of the created ring of USA 193 debris around the Earth in 3D, plus a ground map for this afternoon which shows how the fragments have spread along the full orbital extend by now.

(click images to enlarge)

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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Fragments of destroyed spysat USA 193 still in orbit

In a surprise move, Space-Track, the on-line orbital database of USSTRATCOM (formerly the NORAD database), has released orbital elements for 17 fragments of USA 193 still in orbit.

This is surprising, as normally they don't publish anything connected to a classified satellite launch: for example, they do not publish elements for things like spent rocket booster stages or fairings connected to classified launches. I guess they want to show the world that USA 193 is now indeed reduced to fragments, and that they keep track of them.

On February 24, Norwegian observer Christian Kjaernet observed one of these fragments visually through his telescope. His observation remained uncorroborated for some time (notably because of bad weather experienced by several active amateur trackers), but it is clear now that it was indeed a USA 193 debris fragment.

The 17 fragments for which orbital elements have now been released, have spread over almost the full former orbit of USA 193 in the days between the ASAT intercept and the moment of writing this post. Unfortunately, Space-Track restrictive rules of data dissemination do not allow me to provide a map of the spread of fragments.

Most of the 17 fragments now catalogued will decay over the coming month.

Yesterdays longer USA 193 related TV interview now on-line (expanded 11:00 GMT)

(expanded 22 Feb, 11:00 GMT)

The last two days were pretty hectic and tiring here. After my short appearance in Wednesday evening's 10 pm TV news, I had another TV-crew visiting me yesterday afternoon, for a longer item in NOVA, a well-watched program on Dutch national television providing in depth backgrounds to some news topics of the day.

It was a good interview, and a much longer item than Wednesday's short tv-news item, with several minutes of me being interviewed at my home. The questions asked were good, focussing on the "why?" of this whole thing and the extend as to what "we" (as active satellite observers) know about these classified satellites. The broadcast can be seen here:

Link (video): NOVA item on USA 193, 21 Feb 2008 (in Dutch)

There was a studio guest too: the resident space related Dutch TV expert Piet Smolders. Amongst others he raised the possibility of nuclear fuel being on board (something I had avoided), and mistakenly says this is the first time the US shoots down a satellite (they did it earlier in September 1985, targetting the Solwind satellite).

In the above screenshot (with thanks to Jacob Kuiper), note the book "comets" which was placed there on request of the camera-man for visual appeal. Also, the NASA "Certificate of Appreciation" (related to my participation in the 1998 Leonid multi-instrument airborne science mission) normally hangs on another part of my wall, but was placed there on a similar request... :-)

Earlier that day, at about 7:15 am in the morning, I was called out of my sleep by the Dutch NOS radio news for a comment to the news of the successful ASAT attack in the 8 am radio news. I was still quite groggy, as I had been up at 4 am to watch the lunar eclipse!

A local radio station called too that afternoon, but by that time I was so tired (and had an agreement with the people from NOVA not to comment elsewhere before the broadcast) that I declined.

All the media attention to the USA 193 story caused another prominent peak in my webstats for this site again the past days:

Among the more interesting visitors was for example this one:

Oh: and the total Lunar Eclipse? For a short while around the start of totality (4 am local time), the moon managed to show up through hazy cloud cover. I managed to shoot a few pictures under apalling conditions, the best of which is these:

But I have been lucky to have seen and photographed anything at all, most Dutch and Belgian observers missed it completely due to the weather.

They did it!

USA 193 has been sucessfully intercepted by a SM-3 missile last night. More in my post here.

USA 193 and me in the Dutch TV News

Okay, the news item for which they filmed me (see previous post) has been broadcast in the 10 pm News this evening.

It can be seen on the web here in the news item of 22:00 CET (Feb 20). The item starts at 2m00s in the record, my appearance starts at 2m55s in it.

(note: web url of record changed, 21/02 13:20 GMT)

USA 193 lost in clouds, and a visit from a TV crew

As I feared in my previous post, I lost this evenings USA 193 pass. It did seem to turn clear in the afternoon at first, and in early twilight I had real hope. But eventually, at the 18:42 UTC pass the sky had filled with thin clouds. Naked eye, I could barely make out Aldebaran. Tried to find the relevant star-field in the telescope but failed. Oh well....

Earlier this evening, and after several phone calls in the daytime, I got a visit by a reporter and camera-man of the NOS (the Dutch "BBC"). They shortly interviewed me and shot some pictures of me doing mock observations behind the telescope. It is going to be broadcast in the TV News on the Dutch channel 2 at 22:00 CET.

With the current weather conditions, I have little hope for tonight's total lunar eclipse.

Defeated by the weather?

Just as the, perhaps last, visibility window of the by now world-famous USA 193 (06-057A) is starting here, weather has turned bad. Yesterday evening I could still observe the Keyhole USA 129 (96-072A) and the spent rocket boosters Lacrosse 5r (05-016B) and NOSS 3-4r (07-027B) under already hazy conditions: but now, heavy fog is hiding the skies and all what moves along it.

The USA 193 craziness is still continuing. Following the news that it will be shot with a missile somewhere next week - perhaps Wednesday/Thursday night, see also my ongoing updates here - this weblog is attracting an enormous amount of traffic again. Even more than the previous time USA 193 was in the news, late January.



Yesterday I was called by a journalist from the NRC, one of the "quality" newspapers of my country. This resulted in a short piece on USA 193, with some mention of our amateur observing work and me, in today's scientific pages.

This evening the NOS (our Dutch "BBC") called for a short informative chat, as they might do an item on it the coming days.

With all this, I should almost forget to report that I have been observing a lot the past days, taking advantage of three consecutive days of nice clear skies. Targets on these nights were the satellites and rocket bodies mentioned above, especially USA 129.

I also experimented further with photographing the moon through my ETX-70, in preparation for the lunar eclipse of coming Wednesday-Thursday night (that I am affraid I am going to lose to fog and/or clouds). With the help of a few euro of hardware I bought at a hardware store on Saturday, I made an extension to my telescope to firmly attach the camera to the eyepiece.

Below is one of the results. It is a mosaic composite of three images taken in the evening of February 17th. It is 2600 x 2600 pixels wide, 880 kB (click it to see it in full detail).

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Here's a part-image of the southern highgland with a.o. the craters Tycho, Clavius and Schiller:

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ISS and the Moon

Another clear evening yesterday. The moon is now becoming more and more prominent in the sky. The International Space Station (ISS) made a pass that brought it close to it in twilight at 18:44 local time (17:44 UTC). I made the photograph below with my Canon Ixus on maximum zoom and 2s exposure:

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I also made another moon shot through my ETX-70 telescope:

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Later that evening, telescopic points were obtained on the ELINT sat USA 32 and Keyhole sat USA 129.