Related papers: Satellite Visibility During the April 2024 Total E…
The number of artificial satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is increasing at an exponential rate since 2019. Satellites are visible to both ground and space telescopes, and their bright emission in optical, infrared, and radio-wavelengths…
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is expected to start science operations in 2030 and by that time there could be up to 10$^5$ artificial satellites in Earth's orbit, comprising an increase of an order of magnitude compared to 2024. Most of…
Starlink is a low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation operated by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) which aims to provide global satellite internet access. Thus far, most photometric observations of Starlink satellites…
Thousands of active artificial objects are orbiting around Earth along with much more non-operational ones -- derelict satellites or rocket bodies, collision debris, or spacecraft payloads, significant part of them being uncatalogued. They…
The obscuration of a celestial body that covers another one in the background will be called a ``hierarchical eclipse''. The most obvious case is that a star or a planet will be hidden from sight by the moon during a lunar eclipse. Four…
In recent years, satellite communication (SatCom) systems have been widely used for navigation, broadcasting application, disaster recovery, weather sensing, and even spying on the Earth. As the number of satellites is highly increasing and…
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…
During the months when the galactic bulge is visible from the southern hemisphere, there are typically about 8 to 10 on-going microlensing events at any given time. If the lensing stars have planets around them, then the signature of the…
Up to 100,000 satellites could be launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in the coming decade. Assuming the two most advanced companies' plans are realised, close to 80,000 satellites will be present at a variety of altitudes between 328 -…
This study investigates the orbital decay and subsequent reentries of 12 Starlink satellites from 16 April to 15 May 2024. By examining Two-Line Element data, we observed a significant increase in orbital decay following the geomagnetic…
The exponential increase of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in the past 5 years has brought into intense focus the need for reliable monitoring and reentry prediction to safeguard from space collisions and ground debris impacts. However,…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…
The great conjunction of 21 December 2020 saw Jupiter and Saturn appear together in the sky, separated by just a tenth of a degree (equivalent to a distance five times smaller than the diameter of the full Moon). This provided a potential…
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…
High energy solar flares and coronal mass ejections have the potential to destroy Earth's ground and satellite infrastructures, causing trillions of dollars in damage and mass human suffering. Destruction of these critical systems would…
Solar cycle activity forecasting, mainly its magnitude and timing, is an essential issue for numerous scientific and technological applications: in fact, during an active solar period, many strong eruptions occur on the Sun with increasing…
Model simulations of solar irradiance reaching the Earth's surface during a solar eclipse constitute a useful tool for studying the impact of this phenomenon on the radiance propagation through the atmosphere. A simple approach to extend…
A search for possible radiative decays of solar neutrinos with emission of photons in the visible range may be performed during total solar eclipses. We discuss some results obtained from the digitized images recorded during the August 11,…
In this short communication, we qualitatively analyze possible effects of the 10 October 2024 geomagnetic storm on accelerating the reentry of a Starlink satellite from very low-Earth orbit (VLEO). The storm took place near the maximum of…
NASA's WB-57 High Altitude Research Program provides a deployable, mobile, stratospheric platform for scientific research. Airborne platforms are of particular value for making coronal observations during total solar eclipses because of…