Edmund Weiss (1837-1917) and many astronomers since have called asteroids “vermin of the sky”, but on October 4, 1957 another “species” of sky vermin made its debut: artificial satellites. In the process of video recording stars for possible asteroid occultations, I frequently see satellites passing through my ~¼° field of view.
I’ve put together a video montage of satellites I serendipitously recorded between March 31, 2019 and July 12, 2019. Many of the satellite crossings are moving across the fields as “dashes” because of the longer integration times I need to use for some of my asteroid occultation work. A table of these events is shown below the video. The range is the distance between observer and satellite at the time of observation.
Satellites in higher orbits take longer to cross the field. When possible, I’ve included graphs of brightness as a function of time for these slower-moving satellites after each individual video and corresponding table. When you watch the videos of geostationary satellites, you are actually seeing the rotation of the Earth as the line between you and the satellite sweeps across the stars as the Earth rotates!
I caught one meteor on 4 Jan 2019 between 5:32:57 and 5:32:59 UT. Field location was UCAC4 419-017279. I’m pretty sure the meteor was a Quadrantid!
And two aircraft crossed my field: on 7 Dec 2018 1:40:05 – 1:40:13 UT (UCAC4 563-026131) and 26 Jun 2019 5:02:07 – 5:02:10 UT (UCAC4 291-144196).
And high energy particles (natural radioactivity or cosmic rays) “zing” my CCD/CMOS detector every once in a while. Here are a few examples: 5 Jan 2019 3:46:00 – 3:46:02 UT (UCAC4 473-001074); 20 Apr 2019 3:41:46 – 3:41:47 UT (UCAC4 501-062663); 30 Jun 2019 7:37:31 – 7:37:33 (UCAC4 354-179484) and 7:47:41 – 7:46:44 (TYC 6243-00130-1).
References
Hughes, D. W. & Marsden, B. G. 2007, J. Astron. Hist. Heritage, 10, 21