Space Domain Awareness

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#1

Hi all, I’m interested in using LSST data for space domain awareness research - tracking and characterising satellites.

Will any satellites (e.g. geostationary satellites) be masked from LSST data releases, either to improve data quality or for security concerns?

I though’t I’d ask before I go searching for them!

Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

Hi Sarah – Have you checked out the " Vera C. Rubin Observatory – Impact of Satellite Constellations" webpage?

The " What to expect in Rubin data products" section of that webpage seems particularly relevant, and hopefully answers your question? Thanks very much.

#3

Hi @Physarah, thanks for this question.

When it comes to streaks in images from satellites, “pixel values are not erased, redacted, or otherwise altered in trailed regions” for the visit images released with Data Preview 1.

Satellite streaks (trails) are flagged in the image’s mask plane as STREAK (so they are “masked” as in “can be identified and rejected from analyses”, but not “masked” as in “removed” or “redacted”).

So I think if you go searching, you should find some :slight_smile:

And as an extra FYI in case it’s helpful, learn more about visit images in DP1 tutorial 202.2 Visit images, and more about image mask manipulation in Section 5 of DP1 tutorial 103.5 Image display with Firefly.

#4

Hi Sarah,

I am working on an ML model for doing this with DWF/DECam data with the intention of scaling up to LSST (with a little bit of work). If that is of interest, I’d love to connect and discuss!

Ray

#5

Hi Sarah, this is my area of expertise, and I’d love to chat with you more about it, and invite you to join SatHub at the IAU Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (CPS): cps.iau.org.

I wrote the majority of the content on the ls.st/satcon page that Melissa linked to and would love to be a resource for research you (or @rayh or anyone else!) work on this space. For example, I have a summer student who is doing some work on measuring streak brightnesses in DECam images, and I recently added a glint trail detection algorithm to the difference imaging part of our Science Pipelines.