On Friday, September 03, 2004 2:01 PM Ed said, "I'm surprised that nobody's replied to this (Alistair's) message, at least not publicly." Well, there is some info about visual detection of satellites in daylight in an archived SeeSat message here: http://satobs.org/seesat/Nov-1999/0281.html . It ends with this: Daytime detection and imaging of satellites in the visible and near to mid IR is certainly possible. Whether you can get the positional accuracies you need, I don't know, but two possibly useful references (there are probably others) are: "Ground-based electrooptical detection of artificial satellites in daylight from reflected sunlight "by E. Rork, S. Lin, A. Yakutis Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982 'Porog obnaruzheniia ISZ na dnevnom nebe' [Satellite detection threshold in the daytime sky] by B. Davydov Kosmicheskie Issledovaniia, Vol. 28, Sept.-Oct. 1990 [I believe this appears in an English translation journal, but I don't have the exact reference.] If I remember aright, the basic conclusion in both is that fairly straightforward daytime video detection can be done on satellites down to visual magnitude 8 or so, and I'd assume that applies to field stars too, maybe a bit brighter if you're tracking the satellite. ++++++ An article called, "A Study of Technology for Detection of Nonluminous Artificial Satellites in Daylight" available from http://www.stormingmedia.us/97/9724/A972403.html may be of interest. It has been mentioned before that the AF AMOS telescope in Hawaii can view orbiting satellites in daylight. Tom Iowa USA + + + ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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