Related papers: Satellite Optical Brightness
Modeling the brightness of satellites in large Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations can not only assist the astronomical community in assessing the impact of reflected light from satellites, optimizing observing schedules and guiding data…
A model that combines celestial geometry and atmospheric physics is used to calculate the dimming of artificial satellites as they enter and exit the Earth's shadow. Refraction of sunlight by the terrestrial atmosphere can illuminate a…
The Starlink satellites are shaped like flat panels. The flat sides face zenith and nadir during normal operations. Their brightness is determined by the product of the solar illumination on the downward facing side of the panel multiplied…
The new Starlink V2 satellites incorporate improvements to the chassis brightness through dielectric mirrors, off-pointing solar arrays, and black paint on exposed components. For the general case in which the reflectivities are initially…
The Steward Observatory LEO Satellite Photometric Survey is a comprehensive observational survey to characterize the apparent brightness of the Starlink and OneWeb low Earth orbit satellites and evaluate the potential impact on astronomy.…
Context. To better understand the observed brightness of low Earth orbit satellites, we must characterize their reflectivity, which in turn depends importantly on their bus designs. The reflectivity of a body can be described by Lambert's…
Magnitudes for the VisorSat and Original-design types were analyzed separately and by time. Mean values are compared with those from other large-scale photometric studies, and some signficant differences are noted. The illumination phase…
Artificial satellites orbiting around the Earth, under certain conditions, result to be visible even to the naked eye. The phenomenon of light pollution jeopardises the researching activities of the astronomical community: traces left by…
For terrestrial exoplanets with thin atmospheres or no atmospheres, the surface contributes light to the reflected light signal of the planet. Measurement of the variety of disk-integrated brightnesses of bodies in the Solar System and the…
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…
We present novel techniques and methodology for unresolved photometric characterization of low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. With the Pomenis LEO Satellite Photometric Survey our team has made over 14,000 observations of Starlink and OneWeb…
The illumination phase functions for Starlink Mini satellites are determined for times of twilight and darkness. Those functions are then evaluated to give apparent magnitudes over a grid of points across the sky and over a range of solar…
On large telescopes trails of MegaConstellation's satellites will appears significantly defocused because of their relatively short distance. Because of such effect their apparent surface brightness will be, under a range of conditions,…
The rapid growth of satellite constellations, particularly Starlink, is increasingly affecting ground-based astronomy. In this project, we developed a workflow to detect, identify, and measure the brightness of trails from artificial…
We study the apparent optical brightness of satellite streaks in ground-based observatory cameras as the orbit height is varied. This is done via simulations. Several factors are in play: the range to the satellite, satellite size and…
Large constellations of artificial satellites are beginning to interfere with astronomical observing. Visual magnitude measurements of these spacecraft are useful for monitoring and characterizing their brightness. This paper describes the…
Measuring photometric brightness is a common tool for characterizaing satellites. However, characterizing satellite mega-constellations and their impact on astronomy research requires a new approach and methodology. A few measurements of…
This study evaluates the effect of proposed constellations -- ranging from current deployments to mega-constellations and very bright reflector concepts -- on direct trail losses, diffuse background, and scattered sky brightness. We use a…
Understanding reflectance-related quantities for worlds enables effective comparative planetology and strengthens mission planning and execution. Measurements of these properties for Earth, especially its geometric albedo and phase…
Megaconstellations of thousands to tens of thousands of artificial satellites (satcons) are rapidly being developed and launched. These satcons will have negative consequences for observational astronomy research, and are poised to…