Related papers: Satellite Optical Brightness
Visible-light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols within the boundary layer affect the radiance and polarization states of the radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Remote sensing from suborbital and satellite-based platforms utilizes these…
Our view of the properties of galaxies is strongly affected by the way in which we survey for them. I discuss some aspects of selection effects and methods to compensate for them. One result is an estimate of the surface brightness…
We investigate optical characteristics of flashes caused by impacting meter- to decameter-sized outer solar system objects on Jupiter and contributions of reflected light from surface clouds at visible wavelengths to estimate more accurate…
Glint, the specular reflection of sunlight off Earth's oceans, may reveal the presence of oceans on an extrasolar planet. As an Earth-like planet nears crescent phases, the size of the ocean glint spot increases relative to the fraction of…
The mean apparent magnitude of the Qianfan satellites is 5.76 +/- 0.04, while the mean of magnitudes adjusted to a distance of 1,000 km is 5.24 +/- 0.04, based on 1,161 observations. Light curves of several spacecraft display rapid periodic…
The shadow is a separated feature in the satellite images specially high resolution images. It may be looked as a problem when it causes a loss in the ground ray response to the shaded area, and may be, from other view, considered as an…
We present total and specular reflectance measurements of various materials that are commonly (and uncommonly) used to provide baffling and/or to minimize the effect of stray light in optical systems. More specifically, we investigate the…
This study provides the results of simultaneous multicolor observations for the first Visorsat (STARLINK-1436) and the ordinary Starlink satellite, STARLINK-1113 in the $U$, $B$, $V$, $g'$, $r$, $i$, $R_{\rm C}$, $I_{\rm C}$, $z$, $J$, $H$,…
A BRDF for the VisorSat model of Starlink satellites is described. The parameter coefficients were determined by least squares fitting to more than 10,000 magnitudes recorded by the MMT-9 robotic observatory. The BRDF is defined in a…
We obtained the map of the zenith brightness of the night sky in Italy. The artificial sky brightness in each site is computed by integration of the contributions by each unitary area of surface obtained by applying a propagation function…
For the majority of optical observing programs, the sky brightness provides the fundamental limit to signal detection such that the scientific feasibility is largely dictated by the moon phase. Since most observatories do not have the…
We examine the detectability and interpretation of debris trails caused by satellite disruption in external galaxies using semi-analytic approximations for the dependence of streamer length, width and surface brightness on satellite and…
We present a project to map the artificial sky brightness in Europe in the main astronomical photometrical bands with a resolution better than 3 km. The aim is to understand the state of night sky pollution in Europe, to quantify the…
We analyze photometric data in SDSS-DR7 to infer statistical properties of faint satellites associated to isolated bright galaxies (M_r<-20.5) in the redshift range 0.03<z<0.1. The mean projected radial profile shows an excess of companions…
The total amount of solar irradiance falling on the earth's surface is an important area of study amongst the photo-voltaic (PV) engineers and remote sensing analysts. The received solar irradiance impacts the total amount of generated…
We propose a method to account for the Earth oblateness effect in preliminary orbit determination of satellites in low orbits with radar observations. This method is an improvement of the one described in (Gronchi et al 2015), which uses a…
It is expected that the next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will deliver the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. The emitted thermal infrared light from the planet should show no phase effect assuming the planet…
In order to understand the nature of the lenses that generate microlensing events, one would like to measure their mass, distance, and velocity. Unfortunately, current microlensing experiments measure only one parameter of the events, the…
The mean of 430 visual magnitudes of VisorSats adjusted to a distance of 550-km (the operational altitude) is 5.92 +/-0.04. This is the characteristic brightness of these satellites when observed at zenith. VisorSats average 1.29 magnitudes…
The mean apparent magnitude of Amazon Leo satellites is 6.28 based on 1,938 observations. For spacecraft in their operational mode, 92% exceeded the brightness limit recommended by the IAU for interference with research, while 25% distract…