Below are two videos that I put together from still frames shot the night of November 5th 2009. Each individual exposure that makes up each movie frame is 5 seconds long, and each movie represents about 10 minutes worth of images. The camera shot continuously, the only delay between frames is the download time the camera requires to store the image on disk. The imaging train is the same one that is used on virtually all the astronomical photos on this site, a 12" SCT at f/6 with a SBIG ST-9 taking the images. The telescope drive was turned off, so the stars are trailing, and the satellites (well, some of them anyway) are stationary. Each image is about 22 arc-minutes square. The images are inverted, i.e. North is down and East is to the right.
| XM
Radio and AMC TV satellites |
Cosmos
2397 |
||||||
| The
non-moving objects are (left to right) XM-2 (Rock), XM-1 (Roll), XM-3
(Rhythm), and AMC-16. XM names their satellites, thus the "Rock",
"Roll", and so on. All four are parked in geostationary orbits. AMC-16 is a A2100AX satellite, built by Lockheed Martin. It was lofted by an Atlas-5 from Cape Canaveral in 2004 and provides television and other communications services. WHERE ARE THEY NOW? XM-1 was supposedly retired in 2016 and, depending on the source, has either been moved to a graveyard orbit around 39 West, or has been deorbited. |
Cosmos
2397 (2003-015A) is a Prognoz 2nd generation Russian military surveillance
satellite, intended to provide early warning of missile launches from
the United States. It was launched on a Proton-K rocket from Baikonur
in April 2003. The TBS-satellite.com web site listed it as being out-of-service
due to a fuel tank problem only a month after launch. As of early 2020 it is in a geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean. Since it was reportedly out of service due to a fuel tank issue, I'm not sure how it got to where it is. |
I
International Space Station

This image was taken in 2015.The ISS is much larger now mostly due to the addition of a lot more solar panels.
Questions/comments,
E-mail me at john at theastroimager
dot com