Need Help In Identifying These Objects

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Hello all,
Not sure if this is the best forum thread to post this but here goes.... I have a friend in the US who was out shooting a star trail image a night or two ago and he has picked up a couple of intriguing objects.
His words -"I was wondering if anyone could explain what the little dashes going against the grain of the stars are in this startrail animation. You can see one on the right and a curved one in the lower left. Geosynchronous satellites is the only thing I can think of. Each frame is about 12-13 minutes, or about 40 minutes for the whole animation. This was shooting south towards Orion, cropped in from a 50mm trail."
You can view the animation here.
http://oi39.tinypic.com/2yzif7t.jpg

Wondering if anyone else has any advances on the Geosynchronous Satellite theory?
Cheers
Greg

[astrospotter (Mark)]

Most of the good folk on Ice In Space look just a tad North to see Orion but they will get the idea.

The trails are north-south as you know but to get a good answer they would also need to know your field of view in those frames perhaps. I don't follow which satellites track at any given rate myself so cannot offer help.

Good luck.

[andyc (Andy)]

Hi Greg, geosynchronous satellite is perhaps the best bet. I saw an article in the October issue of the Northern Hemisphere version of Sky and Telescope all about observing geostationary satellites. According to the article, they move even slower than the object in your image appears to move - they perform little orbits over 24 hours about a fixed point in your sky, but his image has the orbits <~0.3deg in diameter! Their apparent altitude depends on your latitude, so from the US they would be somewhere near 6deg S declination in the sky.

Coincidentally I saw my first one the other day, weird to see a 9th mag 'star' remain fixed in the eyepiece of my Dob as other stars wandered by...

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Sounds similar to something I got also, http://i363.photobucket.com/albums/o...lite_jpg00.gif and also what others have got.. here is what the Satellite Tracker Group think... May shed some light on what they could be.


These werent taken by me but these are similar to what you are getting.
http://www.sjaaaa.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=3009

Also an animation of them...
http://www.mediafire.com/?dwkndcy8087acsw

and the Satellites that caused them..

1. The left-most dot:

HORIZONS 1 (GALAXY 13)
NORAD #27954U
Period 1436 minutes
Apogee 35789 km
Perigee 35787 km


2. The long curve:

BLOCK DM-SL R/B
NORAD #28900U
Period 609 minutes
Apogee 34612 km
Perigee 252 km

This satellite (rocket booster), in an elongated geostationary transfer orbit,
is moving upwards (North to South), and is 25700 km away at the time of the
photo.

Add by Eric: This is Zenit 3SL Stage 3 Rocket Body. SL indicates it was
launched by Sea Launch.


3. The left dot of the pair at right:

GALAXY 14
NORAD #28790U
Period 1436 minutes
Apogee 35799 km
Perigee 35777 km


4. The right dot of the pair at right:

AMC-21
NORAD #33275U
Period 1436 minutes
Apogee 35792 km
Perigee 35775 km


5. The slanting streak at bottom right:

GSAT3 (EDUSAT)
NORAD #28417U
Period 1451 minutes
Apogee 36079
Perigee 36065

This satellite is moving downwards (South to North)

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Thank you all for the thoughts on this. I'll pass it on to my friend in the US who took the shots. I'm sure he will be thrilled with the info.