Easy Muffin
Senior Member.
So it seems an Earth-imaging satellite managed to capture another satellite whilst imaging Earth, I wonder if we can identify them?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xEKLsAoWnVETiDN47
This is the Google Maps link. We are near the town of Sherman, TX. Pretty much due north of Dallas on the Oklahoma border. I suppose the afterimages are due to the imaging sat taking pictures at different wave lengths in quick succession to combine them into a single colour image, and the other sat moving quickly across the field of view in the short time between each frame.
On the question of what took the image, it is (c) Airbus, that would narrow the candidates down to six sats: Pléiades-1A and Pléiades-1B (of the Pléiades constellation), Pléiades Neo 3 and Pléiades Neo 4 (of the Pléiades Neo constellation), SSTL S1-4 (of the Vision-1 programme), and SPOT 6 (https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/space/earth-observation/satellite-imagery if you want to know more).
The date given is Nov 30, 2024 - let's assume for now this is correct. As for time for day I went to Suncalc and searched for buildings with straight walls casting a shadow on flat ground. Plenty of those around at the nearby airport. I measure a Sun azimuth of 164°, that's 11:19 local time according to Suncalc.
So... which of these sats might it be? There's one that fits really well, Pléiades Neo 3. It was almost exactly north of Sherman at that time, fitting well with the viewing angles of the imagery, and about to pass that same area. Pléiades-1A made a pass a few minutes earlier and I originally thought this was it, but neither the viewing geometry nor the shadow angles were quite right - so if the date is correct, I would put my money on this being a 3 Neo image.
Now the more interesting question, what sat are we looking at? Unfortunately that's where I haven't made a whole lot of progress so far. Still, might be fun to try and find out somehow. @Mick West, I don't suppose we could rig Sitrec to ingest a TLE so we can put ourselves on top of a sat and watch from its POV like we can do with KMLs and planes?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xEKLsAoWnVETiDN47
This is the Google Maps link. We are near the town of Sherman, TX. Pretty much due north of Dallas on the Oklahoma border. I suppose the afterimages are due to the imaging sat taking pictures at different wave lengths in quick succession to combine them into a single colour image, and the other sat moving quickly across the field of view in the short time between each frame.
On the question of what took the image, it is (c) Airbus, that would narrow the candidates down to six sats: Pléiades-1A and Pléiades-1B (of the Pléiades constellation), Pléiades Neo 3 and Pléiades Neo 4 (of the Pléiades Neo constellation), SSTL S1-4 (of the Vision-1 programme), and SPOT 6 (https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/space/earth-observation/satellite-imagery if you want to know more).
The date given is Nov 30, 2024 - let's assume for now this is correct. As for time for day I went to Suncalc and searched for buildings with straight walls casting a shadow on flat ground. Plenty of those around at the nearby airport. I measure a Sun azimuth of 164°, that's 11:19 local time according to Suncalc.
So... which of these sats might it be? There's one that fits really well, Pléiades Neo 3. It was almost exactly north of Sherman at that time, fitting well with the viewing angles of the imagery, and about to pass that same area. Pléiades-1A made a pass a few minutes earlier and I originally thought this was it, but neither the viewing geometry nor the shadow angles were quite right - so if the date is correct, I would put my money on this being a 3 Neo image.
Now the more interesting question, what sat are we looking at? Unfortunately that's where I haven't made a whole lot of progress so far. Still, might be fun to try and find out somehow. @Mick West, I don't suppose we could rig Sitrec to ingest a TLE so we can put ourselves on top of a sat and watch from its POV like we can do with KMLs and planes?