2021-12-25 Raduga 8

Looking through my astrophotography archive I spotted this little mystery in a sequence of RAW images.

What we see here is the geostationary communications satellite Raduga 8, launched by the USSR in 1981. It is reflecting the sun at us from over 35,000km away in a 15++ second long flare. Pretty neat!

Here's quickly the steps I used to identify it.

Metadata

• Location
  • Name: Reksteren, Vestland Norway
  • Lat Long: 60.04, 05.42
  • Datetime: 2021-12-25T23:34:00+01:00
• Gear
  • Camera: Canon Eos 700D
  • Lens: Included Kit Lens
• Exposure
  • Aperture: f/3.5
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Shutter Speed: 15/1s

Equatorial Coordinates

Identifying any object in the night sky is a whole lot easier if we know the equatorial coordinates. With the wide-angle lens and Orion in the left-hand corner, this is pretty simple in this case, but I'll use the great Astrometry.net which can superimpose a grid directly onto the image. Very convenient!

The result is shown below, and we eyeball the coordinates to approximately Ra04h15m/Dec+1°50'.

Satellite Database

By combining the coordinates with the exact time of capture, a database like In-The-Sky.org can be used to reference what should, hopefully, be located at his exact time and place.

And to my delight, only a minute off schedule, it came zooming by just as ordered.

While this was not exactly a major challenge, it was a fun exercise in locating objects in the night sky.