Related papers: Astrosat: Forecasting satellite transits for optic…
While building up a catalog of Earth orbiting objects, if the available optical observations are sparse, not deliberate follow ups of specific objects, no orbit determination is possible without previous correlation of observations obtained…
The development of large constellations of satellites (i.e., so-called megaconstellations or satcons) is poised to increase the number of LEO satellites by more than an order of magnitude in the coming decades. Such a rapid growth of…
The Canadian MOST satellite is a unique platform for observations of bright transiting exoplanetary systems. Providing nearly continuous photometric observations for up to 8 weeks, MOST can produce important observational data to help us…
The results of observations with the MASTER-SHOK robotic wide-field optical cameras onboard the Lomonosov Space Observatory carried out in 2016 are presented. In all, the automated transient detection system transmitted 22 181 images of…
Using a portable star tracking system, we are able to obtain the geographical position of the observer, longitude, latitude and North direction. In this work, a new optimization method has been applied to improve accuracy in calculation of…
Starlink satellites can become extremely bright when sunlight reflects specularly to an observer on the ground. The observed brightness of such flares is consistent with a bidirectional reflectance function of the Starlink satellite…
The Internet is going through a massive infrastructural revolution with the advent of low-flying satellite networks, 5/6G, WiFi7, and hollow-core fiber deployments. While these networks could unleash enhanced connectivity and new…
Microlensing events are now regularly being detected by monitoring the flux of a large number of potential sources and measuring the combined magnification of the images. This phenomenon could also be detected directly from the…
In order to avoid collisions with space debris, the near Earth orbit must be continuously scanned by either ground- or spaced-based facilities. For the low Earth orbit, radar telescopes are the workhorse for this task, especially due to…
The detection of thousands of extrasolar planets by the transit method naturally raises the question of whether potential extrasolar observers could detect the transits of the Solar System planets. We present a comprehensive analysis of the…
Small satellites have proven to be viable Earth observation platforms. These satellites operate in regimes of increased trajectory uncertainty where traditional planning approaches can lead to sub-optimal task plans, limiting science…
The brightness of Starlink satellites during orbit parking and orbit raising decreased significantly in 2020 when the operator modified their orientation. The mean apparent magnitude before the change was 3.90 +/- 0.18, while afterward it…
The successful prediction of lensing events is a new and exciting enterprise that provides opportunities to discover and study planetary systems. The companion paper investigates the underlying theory. This paper is devoted to outlining the…
CubeSats are small satellites built in standard sizes and form factors, which have been growing in popularity but have thus far been largely ignored within the field of astronomy. When deployed as space-based telescopes, they enable science…
Occultations, the covering up of one celestial body by another celestial body, have been used in astronomy for millennia to learn about the sun and moon. Since 2018, VERITAS has implemented a program to detect predicted asteroid…
Satellite networks are emerging as vital solutions for global connectivity beyond 5G. As companies such as SpaceX, OneWeb, and Amazon are poised to launch a large number of satellites in low Earth orbit, the heightened inter-satellite…
Gaps in space weather observations that can be addressed with small satellites are identified. Potential improvements in solar inputs to space weather models, space radiation control, estimations of energy budget of the upper Earth's…
Magnitudes recorded from 2021 through 2026 for Starlink VisorSats reveal brightening of 0.6 magnitudes, while those of OneWeb show dimming of 0.4. Both trends are significant at 3 sigma. This study is based on 1.6 million magnitudes…
The Australian Space Eye is a proposed astronomical telescope based on a 6U CubeSat platform. The Space Eye will exploit the low level of systematic errors achievable with a small space based telescope to enable high accuracy measurements…
Although many methods of detecting extra-solar planets have been proposed and successful implementation of some of these methods enabled a rapidly increasing number of exoplanet detections, little has been discussed about the method of…