UT Nov 04, 2022: Imaging Satellites

Michael Richmond
Nov 06, 2022

On the night of Nov 03/04, 2022, I observed several artificial satellites of Earth as part of a remote-sensing project. These are preliminary tests of my ability to measure properties of satellites in different types of orbit.

The main setup was:

• Meade 12-inch telescope
• no focal reducer, so working at f/10
• ASI 6200MM CMOS camera
• clear filter, exptime 1, 2, or 3 seconds
• images binned 4x4
• no guiding
• focus values:
  • clear: 1.044 yielding FWHM 2.2 at T = 58/14
• camera ran at T = -20 C

Notes from the night:

• skies were clear, but very humid. Pretty dense fog on the roads as I drove home after the run.
• 10-day waxing gibbous Moon was close to some of my targets
• the seeing was again very good

The first target tonight was GOES-16, a geosynchronous weather satellite. Below is a sample 1-second exposure.

The second target was DIRECTV-15, a geosynchronous communications satellite. It's pretty faint, but I noticed a much brighter satellite in the same field: MUOS-5, which is a commsat for the US Navy. Below is a sample 2-second exposure which shows both objects.

The final target was one of the GPS satellites, known as GPS BIIF-10 (or NORAD 40730). This satellite moves more rapidly (relative to the stars) than the geosynchronous variety, and its orbit tonight was running south-west to north-east. The picture below is a 1-second image.