The CASTOR 'Sputnik 50th Anniversary Satellite-Tracking Bonanza': Project Overview and Preliminary Analysis

摘要

On 1957 October 4, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the Earths first artificial satellite. Today, 50 years later, nearly 13,000 individual man-made objects orbit the Earth in the form of payloads, spent rockets, and an abundance of debris. Last year, the Canadian Satellite Tracking and Orbit Research (CASTOR) project celebrated this monumental anniversary by optically detecting and tracking over 2000 artificial satellites. This is the first time anyone independent of government or military has completed an ambitious project of this nature. The project began on 2007 January 1 and concluded on December 31. During the year, 50,000 images containing 2050 satellites were obtained with a single SBIG ST-9XE CCD camera. This project was also designed to be a preliminary survey of satellites that could be detected with standard astronomical equipment: GOTO telescopes with apertures of 20 and 28 cm (8 and 11 inches) and a CCD camera with a minimum quantum efficiency of 50 percent. Currently, all of the images collected during 2007 are being analyzed for every possible piece of data that can be extracted.