Contains:  Solar system body or event
FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff

FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images

FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff

FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

This is my recent capture of an American SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Spy Satellite called "FIA-Radar 4", this is the first public image of this series of satellites as far as i know. 
Here is some info on them: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/topaz-1.htm


During the animation, the satellite rotates around its own axis as expected. The 2 main "spheres" and the small dot on the lower right seem to be consistent details over several minutes, until the satellite seemingly starts to "tilt". This makes me believe they are real details instead of artifacts caused by processing or seeing.

Each frames in this animation consists of the best 20/100 images stacked and then carefully sharpened. The recording was done with 23.18FPS, so one frames spans around 4.3seconds.
The gap with black frames is when I unfortunately lost the satellite for a moment during the 64° peak of this pass.
Using frame Nr. 33 to measure the diameter of the circular structure, it comes out to being somewhere around 10-12m.

At the end, it seems like the satellite is tilting forward in as little as 30 or 40 seconds? A little dot (communications antenna?) appears over the now thin lower part. (solar panels or SAR antenna?)
A forward-backward looping animation showing the "tilt", there also is a little flare while it rotated forward:  



Acquisition:
Filter=Baader IR685
Frames captured=4796
FPS (avg.)=23.18
Shutter=5.950ms
Gain=3931 (78%)


Stacking was done in Autostakkert 3, best 20 out of every 100 frames stacked, no overlapping frame groups.
Initial sharpening with Autostakkert and refined with deconvolution in PixInsight.
All has been sampled to 400%.
The animations pause for 1 sec at the end.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff
    Original
  • FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff
    B
  • FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff
    C
  • FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff
    D
  • FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff
    E

B

Title: Animated version

Description: showing all stacked frames in order

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: smoother animation

Description: a few shaky frames thrown out to make the animation smoother, otherwise identical to Rev. B

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: raw stack frames

Description: these are raw, unsharpened frames of the best 20/100 frames, even without sharpening some of the details are visible

Uploaded: ...

E

Title: Stack percentage comparison

Description: Top: raw stacks of the best 5/100 - 20/100 - 50/100 frames, no sharpening other than stacking
Bottom: stacks of the best 5/100 - 20/100 - 50/100 frames, sharpening from Autostakkert, no other processing

This shows that the details remain similar even when changing the stack size

Uploaded: ...

Histogram

FIA Radar-4 / Topaz-4 / USA 267 hi-res images, SomeAstroStuff

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