Orbital flares, often mistaken for stars, occur 1,000 times per hour, according to a new study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their detection and exclusion from observations can improve the accuracy of astronomical data.
The study, published November 5 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides a possible explanation for these mysterious outbreaks. Most flashes require powerful telescopes to view, but about a hundred are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye in the suburbs.
'In the course of astronomical research, from time to time, there were flashes of reflected light from satellites; these flashes can trigger false alarms when looking for new events in the sky, ”said lead author Hank Corbett, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill. “This is the first time we've been able to systematically study these outbreaks. This will help reduce their impact on astronomical discoveries. '
The UNC-Chapel Hill team, along with staff from San Diego State University and the University of Barcelona, reported more than 100,000 outbreaks in six months.
The flares were observed with the Evryscopes telescopes in California and Chile, built and funded by the National Science Foundation. A pair of robotic telescopes with gigapixel cameras watch the entire sky above their observatories every two minutes.
“These measurements allow us to predict the impact of reflected light bursts on both current and future professional observatories and to develop methods to mitigate their impact on the data,” Corbett said.
Orbital flares are reflected not only from satellites used for navigation, communications, weather forecasting and space debris such as dead satellites, paint debris, and lost nuts and bolts that have accumulated since space exploration began six decades ago.
These brief flares can be indistinguishable from stars in images from professional observatories and are usually visible for only a fraction of a second.
“Millions of stargazers have probably seen these rapid flashes of light in the night sky,” Corbett said. 'Reflections of reflected light happen so quickly that observers can attribute them to visual noise, but this study provides a possible explanation for these mysterious bursts.
Random reflections from Earth satellites take two forms: brief flares, which can lead to erroneous astrophysical events, and streaks associated with fast moving or slow rotating satellites such as SpaceX Starlink.
Companies are competing to launch thousands of satellites capable of transmitting Internet coverage to Earth. However, in a new study, scientists have concluded that upcoming satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink are unlikely to significantly contribute to the outbreak, although there are other potential impacts of satellite constellations on astronomers.
Bright streaks caused by the movement of sunlit satellites in the image represent a separate class of events that needs to be studied.
