Detection of a geostationary satellite with the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer

Details Detection of a geostationary satellite with the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer Detection of a geostationary satellite with the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer

Jul 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010spie.7734e.105a&link_type=abstract

Optical and Infrared Interferometry II. Edited by Danchi, William C.; Delplancke, Françoise; Rajagopal, Jayadev K. Proceeding

Computer Science

Scientific paper

We have detected a satellite via optical interferometry for the first time, using a 16 m baseline of the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI) to observe the geostationary communications satellite DirecTV-9S during the "glint" seasons of February-March 2008 and 2009 when the sun-satellite-NPOI geometry was favorable for causing specular reflections from geostationary satellites. We used the US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station 1 m telescope to generate accurate positions for steering the NPOI. Stars are the easiest targets for optical/infrared interferometers because of their high surface brightness. Low surface brightness targets are more difficult: if they are small enough not to be resolved out by typical baselines, they are likely to be too faint to produce detectable fringes in an atmospheric coherence time. The 16 m NPOI baseline, the shortest available at the time of our observations, resolves out structures larger than ~ 1.5 m at the geostationary distance, while a typical size for the solar panel arrays is 2 m x 30 m. Our detection indicates that a small fraction of the satellite glinted, not surprising given that the solar panels are not accurately flat. Our fringe data are consistent with a two-component image consisting of a 1 to 1.3 m higher surface brightness component and a significantly larger lower surface brightness component. The brightness of the glints (2.m 4 and ~ 1.m 5 for the two detections in March 2009) and the size scale suggest that the compact component has an albedo of 0.06 to 0.13, while the larger-scale component is much darker, if circular geometry is assumed.

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