More faint geostationary sats?

[Ludd]

I took a few 1 min shots of the flame and horsehead tonight and had a very faint object show up, crossing the field of view very slowly - about the breadth of the flame in a minute's exposure. I seem to remember someone reporting that these were very high satellites - is this right?

[kirkster501]

I took a few 1 min shots of the flame and horsehead tonight and had a very faint object show up, crossing the field of view very slowly - about the breadth of the flame in a minute's exposure. I seem to remember someone reporting that these were very high satellites - is this right?

Hi, is it possible to see geo-satellites like that? Man, they are the size of a small car and 23000 miles away.... You sure that's what it was?

Very interested if so..!

Steve

[lukebl]

There are hundreds of geostationary satellites which orbit the earth above the equator at around 38,000 km, and are of magnitude 6-9. Easy to see in a telescope, and an absolute curse for astro-imaging.

Although they are stationary for us observers, the earth's rotation makes them appear to move slowly relative to the celestial background, so they create trails in guided images. Seen from the UK, they generally appear in a line a few degrees south of celestial equator due to parallax, at around the same declination as the Orion nebula which is why they so often ruin images of that area. However, there are a few which orbit at around the same declination as the Horsehead. For instance, from my location in Norfolk, a communications satellite named Galaxy 6 (launched in 1990) passed through the Horsehead at around 10:19 and a weather satellite named GOES 8 passed through at around 11:12. Maybe one of those was the one you captured?

Here's an image from an earlier post on the subject, showing geostationary satellites passing through Orion. Gives you an idea of the clutter up there.

[Ludd]

Thanks for that - v interesting to see that animation and to realise quite how much clutter there is up there! Here's a very rough single shot of what I picked up.

[jmbillings]

Oh yes - you're right - I see you commented on my post of the same thing: here

Definitely impressed we can pick these up - they are indeed going to be tiny!

[kirkster501]

Well, I never knew. Thanks for the information ! Incredible.