Related papers: Satellite Visibility During the April 2024 Total E…
In 1492, for the first time, an unknown ocean opened up before sailors: weeks of navigation and no idea how to pinpoint their location. Since ancient times, navigators had known how to determine latitude by using the North Star, but the…
The sunlight reflected from the Moon during a total lunar eclipse has been transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere on the way to the Moon. The combination of multiple scattering and inhomogeneous atmospheric characteristics during that…
The mean apparent magnitude of Starlink Mini Direct-To-Cell (DTC) satellites observed in brightness mitigation mode is 5.16, while the mean of magnitudes adjusted to a uniform distance of 1,000 km is 6.47. The DTCs have faded since early in…
The BlueWalker 3 (BW3) satellite was folded into a compact object when launched on 2022 September 11. The spacecraft's apparent visual magnitude initially ranged from about 4 to 8. Observations on November 11 revealed that the brightness…
On ~1613 UT, 3 February 2022 SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites from Cape Kennedy, Florida into ~210 km altitude orbits where they were to receive subsequent boosts. We assume that 9 satellites received subsequent boosts and succeeded…
The Gaia satellite will be launched at the end of 2011. It will observe at least 1 billion stars, and among them several million emission line stars and hot stars. Gaia will provide parallaxes for each star and spectra for stars till V…
Flares are powerful energy releases occurring in stellar atmospheres. Solar flares, the most intense energy bursts in the solar system, are however hardly noticeable in the total solar luminosity. Consequently, the total amount of energy…
The number of satellites in low-Earth orbit is increasing rapidly, and many tens of thousands of them are expected to be launched in the coming years. There is a strong concern among the astronomical community about the contamination of…
We propose a LSST Solar System near-Sun Survey, to be implemented during twilight hours, that extends the seasonal reach of LSST to its maximum as fresh sky is uncovered at about 50 square degrees per night (1500 sq. deg. per lunation) in…
Solar variability occurs over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales, from the Sun's brightening over its lifetime to the fluctuations commonly associated with magnetic activity over minutes to years. The latter activity includes most…
It has previously been suggested that the rate of exoplanet discovery, doubling roughly every 39 months, is indicative of a runaway increase in the number of exoplanets in our galaxy. In this paper, we posit that - due to the finite nature…
A new catalog of visual double systems containing eclipsing binaries as one component is presented. The main purpose of this catalog is to compile a complete list of all known multiples of this variety, both for current analysis and to…
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…
Artificial light at night is a pollutant that is rising fast, as demonstrated by Kyba et al. (1) work by analyzing ten of thousands observations by citizen scientists in the last 12 years. The study found that the dimmest stars are…
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…
Observations of the Earthshine off the Moon allow for the unique opportunity to measure the large-scale Earth atmosphere. Another opportunity is realized during a total lunar eclipse which, if seen from the Moon, is like a transit of the…
Satellite imagery is increasingly used to complement traditional data collection approaches such as surveys and censuses across scientific disciplines. However, we ask: Do all places on earth benefit equally from this new wealth of…
We extend the method introduced by Cinzano et al. (2000a) to map the artificial sky brightness in large territories from DMSP satellite data, in order to map the naked eye star visibility and telescopic limiting magnitudes. For these…
The mysterious 3rd magnitude long period eclipsing binary star system epsilon Aurigae is predicted to be starting its 2 year eclipse in the late summer of 2009. While this is when the real excitement starts, much is to be learned before…
We present the discovery of 52 eclipsing quadruple star candidates detected in TESS Full Frame Image eleanor data by machine learning and citizen scientists. The uniformly-vetted and -validated targets exhibit two sets of eclipses following…