ENVISAT and other satellites flaring over the Italian Dolomites

During the second half of July, I travelled through northern Italy, including an 8-day mountain hike from mountain hut to mountain hut through the high Alpine parts (up to 2770 m) of the Rosengarten Dolomites. The latter mountains are truely marvelous, and perhaps the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen.

During two clear evenings I did some limited astrophotography: limited, as because of weight considerations I had only two lenses with me  (a Canon EF 100mm Macro and a Tamron 17-50mm zoom) . After all, we already had to carry 16 kg on our backs every day while scaling the mountain.

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The image above was shot at 2238m altitude from Rifugio Vajolet on July 23rd. It shows ENVISAT (02-009A) flaring. Since contact with this legendary Europe remote sensing satellite was lost on 8 April 2012, it appears to have started to tumble. Two brightness maxima (one brighter and one fainter preceding it) are visible on the original of the above 30 second exposure, and other (faint) maxima are visible on an earlier and on subsequent images.

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A 45 image series (30s exposure each) from the same location was used to create the above image of startrails circling the celestial pole. The mountain at right is the 3004m high Kesselkügel.

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A few days earlier (16 July), while at lower altitude (1188m) in Aldein (Aldino) where we visited the nearby Bletterbachschlucht, I shot this image of a double Iridium flare. The brighter of the two is Iridium 63, the other one is Iridium 14. The classified Japanese satellite IGS 7A (11-075A) can be seen as well as a fainter steady trail near the center of the image (the original image has 3 more very faint satellite trails as well). The bright star top right is Arcturus.

All images were made with a Canon EOS 60D at 2000 ISO (and part of image series driven by a programmable timer) using a Tamron 2.8/17-50mm set at 17mm.

Clear skies continue!

The series of clear frosty skies is continuing here. Following my last report on December 22nd observations, I have been able to do more observations on the 26nd, 27th and 29th, plus a number of deep-sky guided astrophotography sessions.

But first the satellites. Captured targets on these nights were Lacrosses 3 & 4 (97-064A & 00-047A), the NOSS 3-4 rocket (07-027B), which is still slowly variable, and the NOSS 3-2 duo (01-040A & C).

The latter NOSS duo made a very nice pass across the Pleiades yesterday evening:

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Yesterday, I slao shot this photograph of the open star cluster M35 in Gemini. It is a stack of 65 x 10s images, taken with the Canon EOS 450D piggyback on my Meade ETX-70. Lens was the same EF 50/2.5 (at F2.8) I use for the satellite imagery, and ISO was set at 1200.

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Near the edge of the original, M1, the Crab Nebula, actually shows up as well:

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I used an image of the Pleiades shot the evening of the 25th to glean some more indications of the astrometric positional accuracy of the EF 50/2.5 lens. The stacked image contains several asteroids up to mag. +12 (10 Hygiea, 21 Lutetia, 94 Aurora, 182 Elsa and 264 Libussa), and by measuring these in Astrometrica (highly accurate astrometric software I use for my asteroid searches in NEAT data) and comparing to the predicted positions, it turns out that the positional deviations are typically within 5" (that is arcseconds).

That is the same accuracy AstroRecord (the wide field astrometry software I use for my satellite images) indicates from the fit to the reference stars. So it is the timing uncertainty which is the main cause of uncertainty in my satellite positions.

More on Monday evening

Below is a second astrophotography image I made last Monday evening (see previous post). It shows M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. The image is the result of stacking 100 images of 10s exposure each, made with my Canon EOS 450D + EF 50/2.5 Macro piggyback on my ETX-70.

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A very clear night, Lacrosses, the Breeze-M tank and the Pleiades

Yesterday evening (22 Dec) was very clear. I obtained photographs of the passes of the Lacrosse 5 rocket (05-016B), and Lacrosse 4 (00-047A)..

I photographed Lacrosse 4 with the Pleiades just before eclipse (see below). When inspecting the image for astrometric reduction, I noted a second, fainter trail on the image. Measuring it and running an ID, I found it was close to predicted positions for the Breeze-M (deb) tank, 05-019C. There was an odd 0.6 degree discrepancy though. Mike solved it by pointing out that a SDP4 solution yielded perfect residues, while the SGP4 theory SatFit uses doesn't. So, the question mark plus the "UNID" in below image can be erased.

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Later that night, after the LEO window closed, I spent some time doing astrophotography with my camera piggyback on my Meade ETX-70. I still have to stack part of the images, but already finished stacking 102 x 10s exposures of the Pleiades with the EF 50/2.5 lens, yielding this result:

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Short observing break (partly due to camera defect)

Short observing break here. Several reasons: apart from it being overcast the past three days, it includes that;

- I am working on a double lecture (Friday on my own university, next week in York);
- and am having to deal with a camera defect.

The camera defect is small but fatal for shooting the night sky: for some reason (loose electronic contact?) the wire-release no longer works when the camera is pointed upwards....

So if I am able to observe early next week and after I return from York, it will probably be the good old visual way with the ETX-70 telescope and stopwatch for a while.

Andromeda Galaxy

Finally came to process some images I made after my satellite observing session of September 1st. Stacking 58 images with an exposure time of 15 seconds each, resulted in the image of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, below. The camera (Canon EOS 450D @ 800 ISO) was mounted "piggyback" on my small Meade ETX-70, the lens was the EF 50/2.5 Macro @ F2.8 which I also use for the satellite pictures.

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