Initial Observations of the First BlueBird Spacecraft and a Model of Their Brightness
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
2025-05-12 v1 Instrumentation and Detectors
Space Physics
Abstract
Based on a large set of visual observations, the mean apparent magnitude of BlueBird satellites is 3.44, while the mean of magnitudes adjusted to a uniform distance of 1000 km is 3.84. Near zenith the spacecraft can be as bright as magnitude 0.5. While these spacecraft are bright enough to impact astronomical observations, they can for periods be fainter than the BlueWalker 3 prototype satellite. A model for their brightness shows that design changes since the BlueWalker 3 mission can explain the behavior of BlueBird.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.05820,
title = {Initial Observations of the First BlueBird Spacecraft and a Model of Their Brightness},
author = {Richard E. Cole and Anthony Mallama and Scott Harrington and Jay Respler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.05820},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
11 pages, 20 figures, 1 table