A flashing GPS satellite (Navstar 39, USA 128)

This blog's readers will be familiar with the Global Positioning System (GPS). These US navigational satellites provide us with navigational aid, whether you are on a boat, aircraft, in a vehicle, hiking, or just using your cellphone. Our modern world would be nowhere without them.

But have you ever seen a GPS satellite?

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In the evening of June 25 I by chance captured one of the 41 operational a GPS satellite that was decommisioned last year on photograph: Navstar 39 (USA 128, GPS 2A-27, 1996-056A). It showed up as a very bright small trail  and was flashing at a rate of  2-3 flashes per 10 seconds. Above is a compilation of the photographs taken (Canon EOS 60D with Samyang 1.4/85mm lens).

GPS satellites do not usually get this bright: the satellite was evidently flaring due to a favourable sun-satellite-observer line-up. As this is a decommisioned satellite, the flashing could be due (I am not sure) to the satellite having lost attitude control and being spinning.

30 (mostly) geostationary objects in one image

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The image above was made by me just after midnight of June 18-19, 2012. It is a single image taken with my new Canon EOS 60D and a SamYang 1.4/85mm lens (800 ISO, 10s exposure). It was shot from the center of Leiden town.

The image shows a 11 x 14 degrees wide field low in the south-southeastern sky, between 20 and 30 degrees elevation above the horizon. Diagonally over the image runs a part of the geostationary belt, at declination -7.4 deg for my location.

In this single image, as much as 30 mostly geostationary satellites are visible: 23 commercial geostationary satellites, 1 classified military geostationary satellite (Milstar 5, 2002-001A), and 6 rocket boosters.

I did a poor job with the focus of this image, resulting in a slight unsharpness (especially near the edges of the image). Yet, the number of  objects nevertheless visible in this small piece of low southern sky is amazing!

This is just one of several images I took that night. Apart from Milstar 5, a number of other classified (military) geostationary satellites were imaged and astrometry on them obtained.



PAN in it's new position at 37.9 E

One of these objects is PAN (2009-047A), an enigmatic satellite I have written about before. Here is an image from June 18-19:

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One of the curious aspects of this strange classified geostationary satellite operated by an undisclosed agency (see Dwayne Day's article in The Space Review), is that it is very frequently repositioned. It recently did so again (see my imagery of May 16, when it was still on the move). It has now stopped drifting and taken up position at 37.9 deg E (a position it has occupied before) not far from Paksat 1R, as can be seen in the image above. A stray Atlas Centaur rocket booster passed the area as well when the image was taken.


Vortex 4 and Mercury 2

Other classified objects imaged include  the older geostationary satellites Vortex 4 (1984-009A) and Mercury 2 (96-026A), the latter of which currently also is on the move (it is probably being sent to a disposal orbit after reaching the end of its operational mission):

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Vortex 4  (launched on 31 January 1984) and Mercury 2 (USA 118, launched on 24 April 1996) both are SIGINT (eaves-dropping) satellites, with the Mercury being a further advanced version of the Vortex.

In addition, a newer SIGINT satellite was imaged as well,  Mentor 4 (2009-001A, one that frequently features in this observational blog, as it is bright and easy to observe), and the object designated by our amateur network as  UNK 060616 (probably an old r/b).


Prowler, AEHF 1 and DSP F15 imaged from Winer observatory, USA

While the above imaging was all done from my home in the Netherlands, I also imaged a few objects 'remotely' using the UoI Rigel (MPC 857) 37-cm Cassegrain telescope at Winer Observatory, Sonoita, Arizona, USA.

The enigmatic Prowler (1990-097E), a clandestine launch from Space Shuttle mission STS-38 which has featured on this blog more often (read the intriguing story of Prowler here; plenty of suspense!) was imaged on June 19 and 22. On June 19 I also imaged the military communications satellite AEHF 1 (2010-039A), and on June 22 the old DSP Infra-red early-warning satellite DSP F15 (1990-095A). Images of these objects below:

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Comet 185P/Petriew

In addition to all these satellites, two  Solar System Minor Bodies were imaged: 2012 LZ1 and 185P/Petriew.

I posted imagery of the June 15 fly-by of Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2012 LZ1 here before in my previous post, and obtained more astrometry on this object on subsequent nights. In addition, I obtained some imagery on the faint periodic comet 185P/ Petriew on June 22. Below is a stack of 5 images of 45s exposure each:

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Not a pretty picture, but the comet was near magnitude +17 to +18! My astrometry has been included in MPEC 2012-M33 (22 June).


New camera: a Canon EOS 60D

I had completely forgotten to mention this: during the second half of May, my EOS 450D camera broke down. During a macro-session on Dragonflies, the shutter broke. Much to my regret.

I had the choice between having the shutter repaired (expensive), or buying a new camera. I choose the latter option, as the new generation of EOS cameras performs notably better than the 450D, especially in performance at high ISO (less noise). So I decided to upgrade.

The choice I made was for the Canon EOS 60D, an 18 MP DSLR with Digic IV processor. So far (and having mostly used it for "normal" photography for now) I very much like it!

Before I can use it on satellites in Low Earth Orbit, I'll first have to complete a calibration program with the camera. This calibration entails the delay between the moment you press the shutter button and the exposure is actually taken; and the real duration of exposures (a "10 second" exposure is not exactly 10.00 seconds). I have some preliminary calibration results by now, but it will take some time before I have final results and can start to use the camera regularly on satellites. For geostationary satellites (where the timing accuracy isn't that much of a factor; rather the astrometry is) the preliminary results I have mean I can already use it (as has been done, see this post).

OT: Near Earth Asteroid 2012 LZ1 fly-by imaged, June 15

On June 10, 2012, Australian Siding Spring astronomer Rob McNaught and colleagues discovered a bright Near Earth Asteroid (NEA). It got the provisional designation 2012 LZ1 and turned out to be large: it is estimated to be about 500 meter in diameter (UPDATE 22 June 2012: radar observations from Arecibo obtained during the fly-by actually showed it to be twice as large, i.e. 1 km diameter! This suggests a low albedo, which might imply a carbonaceous composition). It made it's closest approach to the earth/moon system around midnight of June 14/15. With a pass distance of 5.3 million km (a multitude of the Earth-Moon distance), this flyby was not particularly close. But because the asteroid is large, it became quite bright, ~ mag. +13.

In the early morning of June 15, some 9 hours after closest approach, I used the "remote" 37-cm F/14 Cassegrain of UoI Rigel observatory at Sonoita, Arizona, USA (MPC 857, the same telescope that I often use to image geostationary satellites)  to image the asteroid (I also obtained some imagery using the larger 61-cm telescope of Sierra Stars Observatory in California).

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The image above is a stack of 4 CCD images, each of 30 second exposure and spaced 5 minutes in time, obtained with the Rigel telescope. The asteroid can be seen as a set of 4 short trails lining up. It was moving at a rate of about 35"/minute near the Aquila-Capricorn border at that time and was near mag. +13.

Visiting ESTEC for the #AndreTweetUp, an in-flight call with astronaut André Kuipers

On 29 May 2012, some 80 space and twitter enthusiasts gathered at the European Space Agency's (ESA) ESTEC center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, for a "tweetup" called the #AndreTweetUp. This author was among them.

 AndreTweetUp attendants (photo: ESA)

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A "tweetup" is a gathering of twitter users. ESA organised the event around a live in-flight call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is onboard the ISS. Eighty followers of the twitter acount of  André Kuipers were invited to attend, after a selection procedure that included the formulation of a question to Kuipers.

Ten of the 80 people present, actually got to ask that question during the live in-flight call . The event  included two lectures, a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, and ended with the live video in-flight contact.

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard the ISS live from space on the screen, and Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang in front of the screen moderating the live in-flight call (click image to enlarge)

For this author, who was among the lucky 80 to be invited (but alas not among the even more lucky 10 who got to ask their question to Kuipers), this kind of event was new. I jumped the twitter bandwagon late, a few months ago, and untill this #AndreTweetUp occasion, I had never heard of "tweetups".

So I had no idea what to expect. I half expected a hall full of Sheldon Coopers, dressed in Star-Trek costume, mumbling "fascinating!". Or 80 Wolowitzes, trying to hit on the ESA hostesses and talking about the space toilet they designed.

The reality was more benign. Indeed, there were a few people walking around wearing an astronaut's flight jacket covered in space-related patches (mind you: one of those actually was a genuine astronaut: ESA's Christer Fuglesang). And there were a couple of tweeps that seemed to build a life around this kind of events, recognizable by their paraphernalia that included custom t-shirts  and keychains with the words "tweetup" and "space" prominent and a mascotte in the form of a space-suit clad bear called Hughie:

Hughie

But all of these people turned out to be quite nice and normal! The evening before the event, I had a great time as part of an informal evening drink with a few of them (including but not limited to  @travelholic, @4tuneQkie, @DanielScuka and @rtimmermans) in "Einstein" in Leiden:

 Me (right) talking with ESA's Daniel Scuka (@danielscuka, left) about Space and Neandertals with Alex Neumann (@4tuneQkie, seen on back) listening, at the #spaceborrel in Einstein (Leiden) the evening before the tweetup (photo by Eico Neumann/@Travelholic)

You see: this almost looks like normal people! ;-)

Of course, this wouldn't do, so during the tweetup ESA had us all dressed in nerdy t-shirts with the ESA logo and "#AndreTweetUp" on it  ;-)

To bring in the Wolowitz factor, one of the things they let some of us do, was remotely move a robot arm on a future moon-rover located in a lab in Italy. Below is me, giving the command "move arm to left" (no word yet whether they got the rover out of the ditch again).

My Wolowitz moment: remotely moving a robot-arm on an ESA moonrover in a lab in Italy

The program was varied and started with a presentation by ESA's Walker including music videos that amongst others Elton John had made especially for this ISS mission. Walker told that by teaming up with Elton John, the amount of website hits on the ESA mission page increased a factor 2000!

  Tweeps and their laptops (for twittering) in the Erasmus hall

Next we had a very fine video presentation by one of the attendants, Remco Timmermans (@rtimmermans on Twitter), who had travelled to Baikonur to see the launch Soyuz TMA-03M blasting off Kuipers to the ISS.

We were then split-up for a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, including a peek in the clean-labs (where alas photography was not allowed) and a 3D presentation where we got a virtual tour "trough" the ISS.

And of course, a notable number of the attendants duly tweeted all their experiences as the day progressed (photo shows a few of them listening to an explanation at the Russian Foton capsule, and tweeting about it):

The hall where we tweeps were settled, had enough to see too, as it included amongst others a life-size mockup of the European ISS module Columbus, a genuine Foton capsule and  the genuine Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) capsule, the only European capsule having been to space and then re-enter and land safely:

 Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD). This capsule (it is the original) went to space and came back

Life-size Columbus module mock-up (multiple image stitch)

Russian Foton capsule (original)

Overview of the Erasmus hall, with mock-up Columbus module

Next Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang lectured us on his experiences with travelling to the ISS onboard a Space Shuttle, and introduced the very varied research done onboard the ISS:

ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang, went to space twice

And then it was time for the big moment: the live in-flight video call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is flying onboard the ISS as part of the PromISSe mission. The contact happened at 15:55 UTC (17:55 CEST) while the ISS was over the Galapagos and S-America, by means of a TDRS relay.

Here are some of the lucky 10 that got to ask their question lining up:

Even a "celebrity", soap-actress Babette van Veen (worldfamous in the whole of the Netherlands), got to ask a question (at ~6:15 in the video at the bottom of this post):

Below is a video showing parts of the in-flight call (as the memory card in my camera had filled up, I had no space left to film the complete in-flight call. I thought 8 Gb was enough, but no...).


It was fun and interesting to be present at this happening, and I wish to express a sincere "Thank you!" to the people of ESA and ESTEC for organizing this day!

Update on IGS 1B (10 June 2012)

We are slowly getting closer to the uncontrolled re-entry of the 1.2 tons malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B (2003-009B). The satellite's orbit has by now dropped below 340 km altitude (see second diagram below, perigee/apogee values from orbits calculated by Mike McCants based on amateur observations including mine). That is well below the ISS orbital altitude (ISS is currently in a 392 x 406 km altitude orbit). A mere month ago it was still considerably higher, in a 366 x 368 km orbit: it lost over 25 km or orbital altitude since. It is dropping fast, and the rate increases (see diagram below).

Using the latest amateur orbital elements for the object and Alan Pickup's SatEvo software with the current 10.7 cm solar flux, re-entry is currently estimated to occur between mid-July and early August 2012.

PAN is on the move, and detection of an unknown object in near-GEO

Last Wednesday evening (16 May) saw very clear skies. Combined with the absence of moonlight, an ideal situation to target geostationary objects, which are low in the sky for me at 52 N. As they are low  and I am in an urban environment, I need a very transparent sky.

Normally I use the 2.8/180mm Zeiss Sonnar, but this time I went for the SamYang 1.4/85mm. The limiting magnitude of this fine lens is only slightly less than that of the 180mm, but the FOV is twice as large (10 x 14 degrees). It is a geostationary magnet: in one single image I counted 20 geostationary or near-geostationary objects! In total, the session (a sweep of some 25 degrees of equatorial sky in the S-SE, at elevations of 15 to 25 degrees) recorded 38 objects: 7 classifieds, 30 unclassifieds and one unknown.


An UNKNOWN object on May 16

As part of the session, an object in near-Geostationary space was serendipitously observed that cannot be matched to any known object (for recorded positions, see here). It was slowly moving near the commercial geosats Eutelsat 36A and Eutelsat 36B (00-028A and 09-065A) and was captured on several images, small parts of four of which are shown below (note the movement relative to the stable Eutelsats):

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As Heavensat with the latest orbital catalogues loaded showed nothing in this position I initially logged it as a 'UNID'. Then a check with Ted's IDSat software resulted in a very superficial match with the DSP F20 cover (00-024E), but a clearly non-linear delta T suggested this could be a spurious match (see the questionmark and note under my data report here).  Next Mike McCants contacted me, it was indeed a spurious match in his opinion as his analysis of my data suggested an approximate orbit that does not match the DSP F20 cover at all. So for now, the object is designated as UNKNOWN 120516.

Objects like this do not spontaneously materialize, and there is no recent launch that can account for this object. It is therefore likely an old object being relocated. According to Mike, one possible (but by far not certain) option is that it is the classified object Mercury 1 (94-054A, or USA 105), which has not been observed for some time, being retired and relocated to a graveyard orbit.

Unfortunately, both Greg Roberts in South Africa and me here in the Netherlands were clouded out last night and today, so follow-up using Mike's approximate search orbits is troublesome for the moment.


PAN being relocated again

Another classified geostationary object on the move again is the enigmatic PAN (09-047A). This object has an unusual history of frequent relocations, moving to and fro in longitude each few months. It was at 44.9 E in the spring of 2011, then relocated to 39.1 E in the summer of 2011 and next moved to 52.5 E somewhere between late October 2011 (I still observed it at 39.1E on 23 October 2011) and January 2012, when Greg Roberts noted it missing after which Ian Roberts recovered it at 52.5 E early February.

And now its is moving again: Greg Roberts was the first to note this on May 10 and recovered it on May 14 and May 16 while it was and is moving towards 39.1 E (a position it has previously occupied). I imaged it near 39.1 E too on Wednesday evening May 16. Below is a part of one of the images, showing PAN and several commercial geostationary objects, as well as two old rocket boosters in GTO:

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 Other classified (near-)  geostationary objects observed this evening were the SIGINT Vortex 6 (89-035A, also in the process of being relocated), the SIGINT Mentor 4 (09-001A), it's rocket (09-001B), the Milstar 5 communication satellite (02-001A), the DSCS 3-13 R2 rocket (03-008C) and the DSP early-warning satellite DSP F23 (07-054A).

Apart from these geostationary objects, I observed the LEO object USA 186 (05-042A, a KH-12 Keyhole) as well that evening, in its new orbit after it manoeuvered earlier this year.

Voice reception (radio) of Soyuz TMA-04M bringing crew 31 to the ISS

On May 15 the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft was launched from Baikonur, bringing a fresh crew (crew 31) of Kosmonauts to the International Space Station.



At 09:04 UTC (11:04 am local time) this morning (May 16), it passed over Leiden. Using my old scanner radio (Realistic Pro-2042) and a homebrew dipole antenna, I listened in on 121.75 MHz as the Soyuz crew was talking (in Russian) to groundcontrol in Russia. Above is a 54 second record with the best part of the reception, starting at 09:03:40 UTC.

IGS 1B on 12 and 13 May

After a month of generally bad weather conditions, two clear evenings allowed to track IGS 1B (2003-009B) again, the malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite that will have an uncontrolled reentry this summer.

Below video shows footage from both evenings: it opens with May 12 footage of IGS 1B crossing through Bootes and Corona Borealis (25 mm lens), and next shows footage of May 13 showing it moving through Leo and Uma (9 mm wide angle lens)




The photograph below was shot in the evening of May 13 using the EF 2.0/35mm lens, showing IGS in Leo over the roof of my house:

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Other objects tracked include the IGS 5 r/b (09-066B). I also obtained remote telescopic imagery of Prowler (90-097E) using the 37-cm Rigel telescope in Sonoita, Arizona.

An update on IGS 1B - a spy satellite about to reenter this summer

(updated reentry prediction at the end of this post)

Last year I wrote extensively about the malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B (2003-009B) which is about to reenter, uncontrolled, into the atmosphere soon. The above footage of the object was shot by me last April 13 and 14 and shows two passes over Leiden.

This radar satellite, launched to keep an eye on North-Korea in 2003, malfunctioned in March 2007, halfway though its mission. Since then, it has been steadily coming down (see diagrams below) in a way that clearly shows that the satellite operators do no longer have control over it.

Last year, I pointed to the fact that the 1.2 tons  satellite will reenter in 2012 (so this year), and likely still has some remnant fuel onboard. A subsequent assessment by high-end amateur satellite tracker Ted Molczan showed that this amount of fuel is limited - probably about 14 to 50 kg, an order of a magnitude less than the infamous case of USA 193 in 2008. This assessment is important, as an uncontrolled reentry of a satellite with fuel onboard is a potential hazard (reason why I wrote about it last year) and authorities were (and are) very quiet about it. Ted's assessment, the only public one to date, helped to put the potential risks involved into proper context.

In the autumn of 2011 we temporarily lost track of IGS 1B because it entered winter invisibility for the Northern hemisphere (where most of our observers are located). Early April this year, it emerged from this winter blackout again. I did a failed attempt to recover it on the evening of April 2, and then Russell Eberst successfully recovered it a day later on the evening of April 3. Since then, I observed it on April 13, 14 and 22 (see video footage above of the April 13 and 14 passes) and other amateurs have observed it as well.

Below is a 35-second integration of video frames from the April 13 video (upper right are tail stars of the Big Dipper):

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Orbital evolution over the winter blackout

When IGS 1B was lost in the winter blackout in the autumn of 2011, it was in a 453 x 455 km orbit. Since then, it has come down considerably: as of 2012 May 1 it is in a 366 x 368 km orbit, almost 100 km lower (and now below the orbital altitude of the ISS). It is coming down at an increasingly fast speed, as the diagrams below show (based on orbital calculations by Mike McCants, derived from amateur observations which include my observations):

click diagrams to enlarge

 

Current Decay Prediction

Using Alan Pickup's SatEvo software with the current orbit and solar activity, I expect the reentry of IGS 1B to occur somewhere during a window that spans from June until August. As the orbit is evolving fast, it is pertinent that we keep close track of the object in order not to lose it (a few days old elements already results in several minutes uncertainty in pass time).

April 20 Brazilian fireball was NOT the reentry of an Atlas Centaur r/b

A beautiful, slow, long duration, fragmenting fireball was filmed from Brazil in the evening of April 20 (20 April near 20-21h UT). Movies can be seen here and here.

Soon after the apparition, the question came up: meteoric fireball, or a reentry of "space junk"? Based on the visuals of the two movies available, I noted that it looked like a meteoric fireball, not a reentry.

Subsequently, a piece appeared in Universe Today, claiming it was a reentry: that of an Atlas Centaur rocket, #16102, 85-087B, which launched Intelsat 512 in 1985.

That conclusion is simply wrong however. According to USSTRATCOM the object in question decayed 18.5 hours earlier than the fireball, over the western Pacific at 1:23 UTC (20 April) near 18N, 161 E. It reentered nowhere near Brazil. It did pass over northern Brasil on its final pass an hour before reentry, but that would have been at 00:30 UTC, not 20-21 UTC. Moreover, even that pass would have been too much north to see it from the southern Brasilian location where it was filmed from: it would have passed below the horizon as seen from there.

And even if pieces would have survived longer (highly unlikely in this case), these could not have caused a fireball over Brasil 18.5 hours later: the orbital plane of the r/b was wrongly oriented for that. Around the time of the fireball, any surviving objects in the Centaur orbit would not pass over Brasil but much more north, over Mexico and the Caribean (see below. Note: the object was no longer in orbit at that time!).

So, the object that was filmed was most likely a piece of asteroidal debris, a very nice, very slow and very long duration meteor grazing through the upper atmosphere and breaking to pieces.

FIA Radar 2 (NROL-25) observed - with video

On the night of April 3/4, the NRO launched NROL-25, a new classified satellite. This satellite, FIA Radar 2 (USA 234) is the second of the FIA Radar satellites, and the third launch (assuming that the failed USA 193 was the first) in the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) series. It received the SSC catalogue entry #38109, international Cospar launch code 2012-014A.

Like its earlier sistership FIA Radar 1, FIA Radar 2 is in an unusual retrograde orbit (proving that it is a radar satellite). Going from estimated search elements by Ted Molczan, Scott Tilley in the US Canada was the first to see the new object on April 4 some 5 hours after the launch. Following that, a.o. Björn Gimle in Sweden, Russell Eberst in Scotland, Alexander Repnoy in Russia and Kevin Fetter and Ted Molczan in Canada observed it.

I was clouded out on Wednesday 4 April, but yesterday evening (5 April) was clear and it was finally my turn: I could observe both evening passes, and film them. The above video provides a compilation of the obtained footage.

The first pass occurred in late twilight near 19:33 UTC , the second at 21:16 UTC (23:16 pm local time). A Near-full moon resulted in a quite light sky.  During the first pass, my GPS time inserter had some trouble maintaining the time signal (see "GPS Bad" message in first part of the footage above) and by coincidence my photo camera malfunctioned as well (due to a mistake with the wire release). Luckily, I had a second pass at 75 degree elevation 1.5 hours later, during which I could obtain a good set of positional data.

FIA Radar 2 was about mag. +4 and steady in brightness. Radio observers report a fading cycle in the radio signal, but visually the object is very steady.

I obtained some photographs as well, during the second pass of the evening. Below is a picture (Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.5/50mm Macro) shot while FIA Radar 2 crossed through the tail of the Big Dipper (Alcor & Mizar in top of the image). It is not the best of images due to the moonlight, but shows the satellite trail well in this 5-second exposure:

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Over the comings days/weeks the new satellite will probably be actively manoeuvering, so it will be a nice object to keep track off!

OT: a multistation filmed meteor from 27 March - some results on the trajectory

In the early morning of March 27, while waiting for a pass of ATV-3, I accidentally filmed a nice meteor from Leiden. As it turned out, the same meteor was also filmed by the meteor surveillance video of Martin Breukers in Hengelo. Hence, we have this approximately mag. -1.3 meteor multistation, allowing triangulation to determine the 3-dimensional atmospheric trajectory and orbit in the solar system. Martin used UFOanalyzer software to process the images and arrive at an atmospheric trajectory. I used my orbital spreadsheet Metorb85 to compute a heliocentric orbit for the meteor.



The movie above shows the meteor footage as obtained from Leiden and Hengelo, plus a 360-degree fly-by around the reconstructed atmospheric trajectory.

The meteor started at 51.745 N, 6.267 E, at 100.4 km altitude. It ended at 51.961 N, 6.707 E and 75.2 km altitude. It had an initial velocity of 27.8 km/s.

Above are two integrated frames images of the meteor, a still image showing the 3D trajectory, and images showing the orbit in the solar system. As the convergence angle between the trails as seen from both video stations was not particularly large, the resulting orbit has some inaccuracy. Nominal orbital element values are:

a = 1.87 AU,
q = 0.450 AU,
e = 0.759,
i = 10.47 deg,
omega = 285.84 deg,
node = 6.696 deg.

The geocentric radiant was near RA 198.20 deg, dec. +4.01 deg, Vgeo 25.67 km/s. The radiant position has some leeway due to the low convergence angle. Hengelo saw the meteor appear in Corona Borealis: Leiden in the Aquila-Sagitta-Delphinus border area.

The Nanosail UNID (10-062X) and Lacrosse 5 brightness variation

When NASA's experimental solar sail Nanosail-D was launched by a Minotaur IV rocket in 2010, it was not the only object this launch brought into space. A number of other, classified objects were part of the same launch.

Now Nanosail-D has decayed, four of these objects (RAX, OREOS, FASTSAT, FAST 1) are being tracked by amateur trackers. One additional object of the launch that is being tracked, however cannot be identified reliably with one of the payloads so far. It could be a payload, or a rocket part from the launch. Dubbed the 2010-062 UNID (10-062X) or "Nanosail UNID" by amateur trackers, it is an object near magnitude 4-5, stable in brightness.

The footage above (WATEC 902H + Canon EF 2.0/35mm lens) shows it passing through the tail of Uma (bright stars are epsilon Uma and delta Uma) on April 1st 2012.

I also filmed Lacrosse 5 (05-016A) that evening. The erratic brightness behaviour of this satellite has featured before on this observing blog. Using footage from the April 1st pass and LiMovie, I reconstructed the brightness curve below, showing a  flare at 20:09:14 UTC and a general quite irregular brightness behaviour with what looks like several small peaks. At 20:09:30 UTC, it appears to do it's typical "disappearance trick" again, dropping rapidly in brightness in just a few seconds of time (note: shadow entry was not before 20:12:00 UTC). The profile is very similar to profiles for Lacrosse 5 which Philip Masding previously obtained, also showing the "disappearing trick" being preceeded by a flare.

click diagram to enlarge

The video footage this curve is based on, is this footage (shot with a 12mm wide-angle lens):



More objects were observed the past few nights. Among them USA 129 (96-072A) and Lacrosse 4, while CCD imagery of Prowler (90-097E)  using the "remote" Rigel telescope of Winer observatory was obtained again as well.

(video) A last view of ESA's ATV-3, with ISS, FIA Radar 1 and an old Russian Soyuz upper stage

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This morning near 3:39 UTC (5:39 am local time), Europeans could witness the last visible pass of ESA's Space Freighter ATV-3 'Edoardo Amaldi' on its way to the International Space Station (ISS), less than a day away from docking to the ISS in the night of March 28/29.

I watched, photographed and filmed the pass from Leiden: footage shot with the WATEC 902H + 1.4/12mm lens, and a photograph made with the Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.0/35mm lens, can be seen above.

I got a very fine view with more than just the ISS and ATV visible. Just before the ISS became visible around 3:56 UTC a bit of  bright (mag +1) space-debris, an old Russian Soyuz Zenit upper stage crossed the sky (see first seconds of the video above, left in the FOV): 99-039B, the upper stage from the OKEAN-O launch in 1999 [edit 30/03/2012: it is a Zenit rather than a Soyuz r/b - with thanks to Ralf Vandeberg]. Next, the ISS emerged out of earth shadow eclipse near Arcturus, quickly attaining a brightness of -3 to -4. As it moved through Bootes, Corona Borealis, Hercules and into Lyra, the American military satellite FIA Radar 1 (10-046A) came into view, going the opposite direction of the ISS (nicely demonstrating that it is in a rare retrograde orbit, i.e. moves from east to west rather than west to east). As FIA Radar 1 started to descend to the west through Corona Borealis, ESA's ATV-3 came into view, again as a nice and bright naked eye object attaining about mag. 0 to +1. It followed the ISS by almost exactly 3 minutes, just a little bit too much separation alas to image the ATV and it's destination the ISS together. The photograph above (and the video) shows it together with the FIA Radar 1: ATV-3 is moving up, the FIA Radar 1 down! (note: for easthetic reasons, I photoshopped an annoying trail from the aircraft that can be seen in the video, out of the photograph).

The video ends with ATV-3 descending in the east and disappearing behind the roof of our appartement building.

I wish to thank Laurent Arzel (ESA) for providing me with predicted orbital elements with manoeuvres of ATV-3 taken into account. Some web-based satellite prediction services (and surprisingly, the German DLR in a tweet) used "old" elements from the 27th, that lead to erroneous pass times (off by over 5 minutes: these suggested the ATV was leading the ISS by 2.5 minutes, while in reality it was following by 2.5 to 3 minutes!). Thanks to Laurent's elements, I could plan for the correct situation and point some fellow amateur observers to the correct pass times.

With docking less than half a day away as I write this, our Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard ISS can look forward to fresh supplies of Dutch cheese soon!

Video: ATV 3 'Edouardo Amaldi', a meteor, and the ISS this morning

This morning I was up early to capture the 3:29 UTC (5:29 am CEST) pass of ESA's space freighter ATV-3 "Edouardo Amaldi". This was just before the start of twilight, so the sky was still dark and several stars can be seen on the video. The video was shot from the center of Leiden town, from the east-facing window of my girlfriend's  appartment. Camera: WATEC 902H + 1.4/12mm lens.

The ATV emerged from Earth shadow at about 38 degrees elevation in the E-SE. Initially mag. +1, it was easily visible by the naked eye, then faded as it descended towards the horizon.

The movie also features footage of a nice 3-second meteor that appeared only a few minutes before the ATV pass: as well as footage of the ISS passing the same sky area about 30 minutes before the ATV.

 Brightest star in the FOV is Altair (alpha Aquila), with the stars of the Arrow just upper left of the center, and stars of the Dolphin near the GPS clock.

Below is also a photographic image, a 6-second exposure with the Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.5/50 mm Macro lens, showing the ATV on the border of Aquila and Sagitta.

click image to enlarge

Note: with a special "thank you!" to Laurent Arzel at ESA ATV CC-flight dynamics for providing timely orbit forecasts!

Brightness variability of the NOSS 3-3 Centaur Upper Stage (with video)

NOSS 3-3 is a pair of US Navy NOSS surveillance satellites launched early 2005. The Centaur upper stage of this NOSS 3-3 launch, NOSS 3-3r (2005-004B) is still orbiting earth as well. And as it does so, it is tumbling.

This tumbling is visible to an observer as a regular variation in brightness. Currently, the rocket stage brightens up every 11.4 seconds.

Below video shows the regular variation in brightness: watch it go from faint to bright to faint etcetera with an 11.4 second period. It is footage from a pass over Leiden which I filmed in the evening of March 22, using the WATEC 902H and a Canon EF 2.0/35 mm lens:

click images to enlarge

Using LiMovie, I extracted the brightness variation from the movie on a frame by frame basis, resulting in the depicted brightness profile above. Note that the tops of the curve are sharp, not rounded. It is a nice saw-tooth pattern. The integrated video frame picture shows the brightness variability nicely too.

Documenting this kind of tumbling behaviour (and notably how it changes over the years) can actually provide some valuable scientific data. A number of amateur observers specialize in these "flash observations", notably my fellow members of the Belgian Working Group Satellites (BWGS).