RE: Question about a satellite I may have imaged

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2020 13:46:28 -0400
Matt wrote:

> ...  And then try to find a
> database to search what could have been in that line of sight.  If
> anyone knows of a way of doing *that*, I'd love to hear it.

IDSat assists in the identification of observed satellites, by computing and tabulating close
appulses of known satellites relative to the observed time and position. IDSat also lists the
direction of travel, angular velocity and estimated prediction accuracy. Subject to the availability
of data, it can also estimate the predicted visual magnitude.

http://www.satobs.org/programs/IdSat/IDSat.zip

Using IDSat, I found no orbiting candidates that could explain what is seen in your video. The
search covered a radius of 3 deg from the centre of the solar disk, and a span of +/- 120 s of the
observation time.

Here are the first three lines of the ctl file:

43.9508125 72.6671875 283 Matt Considine
20 07 02  14 38 33.25  06 47.3658  +22.98938889  comments
120 3

The fourth and final line is the path to the orbital elements file. The format of the above is
defined in the program documentation.

I used a recent full catalogue file of TLEs (2-line orbital elements), downloaded from Space Track,
and augmented with the elements of a few hundred objects in secret orbits tracked by my fellow hobbyists.

Ted Molczan

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Received on Fri Jul 03 2020 - 12:47:42 UTC

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