SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the clear-with-a-chance-of-satellites dept.
Numerica telescope tracks satellites in broad daylight:
Given how many satellites and bits of orbital debris are now orbiting the Earth, it's becoming increasingly important to keep track of where they all are. A new telescope system allows space agencies and other clients to do so – even in broad daylight.
Developed by Colorado-based company Numerica, the technology is described as being "the first fully-functional, low-cost telescope system that can observe Earth-orbiting satellites in broad daylight at altitudes of more than 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles)."
Two prototypes have already been deployed and tested at sites in Colorado and Australia, where they were reportedly proven to be capable of detecting objects from low-Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit, both day and night. More are currently being set up at other locations, as part of the broader Numerica Telescope Network.
[...] The Numerica system received a US patent on Aug. 11th, and will be presented next month via the online Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies conference. Its tracking capabilities are demonstrated in the video below.
YouTube video: Numerica - Detection from night to day.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nostyle on Tuesday September 08 2020, @05:54AM (1 child)
It's neat that they can use shortwave infrared and optically filter out daylight noise to watch objects in orbit during daylight hours. Still orbital trajectories are rather determined, so if you find something orbiting at night, you pretty much already know where it will be during the day, so there is not much new information that you can learn with this system.
OTOH, when alien ships start to arrive, I suppose it would be handy to have a means to watch their movements during the day.
BTW, the video is one of the least informative things you will ever see on YouTube.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:27AM
Wow. Not even close. What you said is true for a backyard naked eye satellite observer where your field of view is half of the visible sky. I don't think this was designed for the amateur backyard astronomer, but even if it was, that person will have a heck of a time finding the satellite in their telescope even after one orbit. Trajectories are not rather determined. If you want a shot at finding something in your telescope, you grab the most recent orbital elements from NORAD, propagate the orbit to some point in time where it will be passing over your location, make damn sure your telescope is synchronized very well with an accurate time server, and that will get you in the neighborhood. Then you hunt and poke around and hope you see it before the pass is over.
Let's take the ISS, which is moving at 8 km/s at an altitude of 400 km. So it is moving 8/400 = 0.02 rad/s. Now take a very nice telescope, like the 16-in Meade LX200 (4-meter focal length) and put a pretty nice camera on it, like the Nikon D4, and that give you about a half a degree FOV, which is 0.009 radians. At the ISS altitude, that 0.009 radian FOV is about 3.5 km, so you have to predict its position to better than that to catch it in your camera. Unfortunately, for a LEO satellite, your position error when you propagate your orbit is something like 100 meters every 10 minutes, so if you know the exact position and velocity of the LEO satellite right now, your best guess of where it will be 12 hours from now is something like 7 km, which is about twice your FOV, so it won't be where you're looking for it. And this is all assuming the satellite is just free orbiting. If it made any orbital adjustments since you last saw it, like little thruster burns to tweak its orbit, then you are really in trouble and you need to get the latest NORAD elements and start over if you weren't able to happen upon it by hunting and pecking.
So why would you want to see it during the daytime? I didn't bother to try to figure out from the PR what this particular system was designed for, but one thing I can think of is say you want to do high speed data transmission with lasers where you need to point your laser right smack on the satellite. It is a lot easier to do that when you can see the satellite because once you have it in your telescope FOV, you can tweak the pointing to just where you need it to maximize your data transmission (let's say you've figured out that you maximize your data transmission when the satellite dot is on pixel (343, 985); once you get it in your FOV you can quickly move the pointing to put the spot on that pixel location before the pass is done). Now during the daytime, for the reasons above, you are SOL if you can't see it.