Hey there, it's been a little while. I'm creating a web app that is hugely inspired by the desktop app, Heavensat. This is also why I didn't think a lot about how to name it and named it simply Heavensat Web for now :) It is open source and in its current state can be found at https://1valdis.github.io/heavensat-web/ Don't take it as any sort of release announcement, however, this is only to show a work in progress. The app isn't mobile friendly for now, and there are a lot of features to make and a few issues to fix. Eventually I want to make the calculation of satellite flares for the app. For starters, I want to implement the same technique as in the desktop Heavensat. There, for a given satellite mirror you'd have 2 angles: the off-nadir angle and the azimuth counting from the speed vector, and they describe the normal of the mirror. (There is also the third angle that describes the spread of the reflected light ray but it's less relevant here). I want to start from the COSMO-SkyMed and MetOp constellations, as their flares were calculated on CalSky before its closure and currently there is no online resource that I know of, that is able to calculate them. And for this I'm asking SeeSat-L community for the 2 angles if they are known (and in case of MetOp, there would be 3 sets of angles since each satellite has 3 flaring surfaces). I haven't been actively observing satellites for a few last years, and I don't know of any satellites that produce known flares from fixed surfaces other than the abovementioned ones. Are there? In a broader perspective though, I want to incorporate more complex surfaces than simply fixed ones. I think that it should be possible to calculate flares from solar panels and similar rotating surfaces of the controlled satellites, knowing how the surfaces rotate. And for this I wonder if there was or is any known research into this topic. I remember CalSky also tried to calculate flares from Iridium solar panels, but I don't know if those were described as fixed or rotating surfaces; from my observations those flares also weren't happening. But the attempt was still there. Has anyone else attempted calculating flares beyond those from fixed surfaces? What are the specific satellites that could use such approach? If there were attempts, what were the techniques considered to describe those surfaces? What were the results? What are the satellites on which this was attempted? Thank you for your attention. Sincerely, Vlad _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list https://lists.seesatmail.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Fri May 23 2025 - 09:23:52 UTC
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