Related papers: Satellite Optical Brightness
Ground-based optical astronomy necessarily involves sensing the light of astronomical objects along with the contributions of many natural sources ranging from the Earth's atmosphere to cosmological light. In addition, astronomers have long…
The radiation of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) reflects from the Moon and Sun. If a reflection is detected, the time interval between the direct and reflected signals constrains the source to a narrow arc on the sky. If both Lunar and Solar…
Knowledge of the night sky radiance over a large territory may be valuable informationto identify sites appropriate to astronomical observations or for assessing the impacts ofartificial light at night on ecosystems. Measuring the sky…
We study the luminosity function of satellite galaxies around isolated primaries using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic and photometric galaxy samples. We select isolated primaries from the spectroscopic sample and search…
The population of artificial satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth imposes non-negligible constraints on both space operations and ground-based optical and radio astronomy. The ongoing deployment of several satellite…
The mean apparent magnitude of Starlink Mini Direct-To-Cell (DTC) satellites is 4.62 while the mean of magnitudes adjusted to a uniform distance of 1000 km is 5.50. DTCs average 4.9 times brighter than other Starlink Mini spacecraft at a…
We have studied the radial distribution of the early (E/S0) and late (S/Irr) types of satellites around bright host galaxies. We made a volume-limited sample of 4,986 satellites brighter than M_r = -18.0 associated with 2,254 hosts brighter…
The identification of an extrasolar planet as Earth-like will depend on the detection of atmospheric signatures or surface non-uniformities. In this paper we present spatially unresolved flux light curves of Earth for the purpose of…
The obliquity of a terrestrial planet is an important clue about its formation and critical to its climate. Previous studies using simulated photometry of Earth show that continuous observations over most of a planet's orbit can be inverted…
We study satellite galaxy abundances in SDSS by counting photometric galaxies around isolated bright primaries. We present results as a function of the luminosity, stellar mass and colour of the satellites, and of the stellar mass and…
The photometric properties of the surface of Mars describe how remote measurements of surface reflectance can be linked to hemispherical albedo used for energy balance calculations. A simple Lambert model is frequently assumed for global…
We investigate the influence of lunar-like satellites on the infrared orbital light curves of Earth-analog extra-solar planets. Such light curves will be obtained by NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and ESA's Darwin missions as a…
This paper presents multi-filter measurements of the night sky brightness at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Sutherland in the presence of a bright moon. The observations cover a wide range of sky directions, lunar…
We report a simulation and quantification of the impact of the Starlink constellation on LSST in terms of the trail surface brightness using a BRDF-based satellite photometric model. A total of 11,908 satellites from the Gen1 and Gen2A…
A demanding challenge in atmospheric research is the night-time characterization of aerosols using passive techniques, that is, by extracting information from scattered light that has not been emitted by the observer. Satellite observations…
Earthshine observations offer a unique opportunity to study Earth as an exoplanet seen from the Moon. As the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry changes, Earth can be observed as a spatially unresolved exoplanet at different phase angles, providing…
In August 2025 a workshop was convened to bring together experts to better understand steps that can be taken to mitigate the impact of satellite constellations on astronomical observations. At the time, just over 12,000 operational…
We propose that astronomers will be eventually be able to discriminate between extrasolar Earth-like planets with surface oceans and those without using the shape of phase light curves in the visible and near-IR spectrum. We model the…
The mean of 830 visual magnitudes adjusted to a distance of 550 km (the operational altitude) is 4.63 +/-0.02. The data on DarkSat, the low-albedo satellite, indicate that it is fainter than the others by 1.6 magnitudes or 78%. However,…
The Swift satellite made a real break through with measuring simultaneously the gamma X-ray and optical data of GRBs, effectively. Although, the satellite measures the gamma, X-ray and optical properties almost in the same time a…