Peter C. Zimmer, (Go Green Termite, Inc., University of New Mexico), Mark R. Ackermann, (Go Green Termite, Inc., University of New Mexico), John T. McGraw, (University of New Mexico)
Keywords: SSA, LEO, uncued, GPU, survey, streak detection
Abstract:
By astronomical standards, small objects (<10cm) in LEO illuminated by the Sun under terminator conditions are quite bright, depositing 100s to 1000s of photons per second into small telescope apertures (< 1m diameter). The challenge in discovering these objects with no a priori knowledge of their orbit (i.e. uncued surveillance) is that their relative motion with respect to a ground-based telescope makes them appear to have large angular rates of motion, up to and exceeding 1 degree per second. Thus in even a short exposure, the signal from the object is smeared out in a streak with low signal-to-noise per pixel. Date of Conference: September 10-13, 2013
Track: Optical Systems