Author Topic: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit  (Read 9379 times)

Offline ralfvandebergh

The Agena-D is best known from the Gemini-era as the Agena Target Vehicle (ATV). The one in the picture is pretty the same type of rocket stage but without docking adapter from a military launch in 1964. I'm intrigued by the fact that the technique to photograph it in Earth orbit wasn't yet available at the time of launch. The object is pretty small at 818 kilometers, the image looks easier then it was. I captured it with a 10 inch telescope and manually tracking and a video camera.

The vid was already shot in 2011 but it was on my processing-waiting-list and processed finally this month.

Ralf Vandebergh
« Last Edit: 11/02/2014 08:59 pm by ralfvandebergh »

Offline laszlo

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Seriously cool.

Can you give us any more technical details on how you did this? Stacked images? How you managed the manual tracking? Etc.?

Laszlo

Offline satwatcher

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Cool!

Do you also have a video?

Offline kevin-rf

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Fyi:

From Gunter's website
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/dmsp-1.htm

It launched DASP-1 F6 and DASP 1 F7 on a Thor-DM21 Agena-D.
Quote
The DSAP-1 (Defense Satellite Application Program Block 1) satellites series, also known as P-35, was the first series of military meteorologal satellites of the USA.

Went digging through Heavens-Above, The Agena and both satellites are still in orbit

The Agena D, COSPAR ID 1964-002-A is currently in a 760 x 810 km; 99.0° orbit
The DASP-1 F6, COSPAR ID 1964-002-B is currently in a 786 x 806 km; 99.0° orbit
The DASP-1 F7, COSPAR ID 1964-002-C is currently in a 788 x 811 km; 99.0° orbit

Those are some seriously quality optics to pull that resolution off at that altitude. Kudo's
« Last Edit: 11/01/2014 01:33 pm by kevin-rf »
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Offline Blackstar

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P-35 was a classified NRO weather satellite program.

It gradually got turned into a white program. It's an interesting program in terms of how it was run.
« Last Edit: 11/02/2014 07:29 pm by Blackstar »

Offline ralfvandebergh

Laszlo

The tracking is done with a smaller secondary scope with crosshair at low magnification. Some images of the rocket are captured in the video. The best frames are selected. In this case no stacking of multiple frames is used. Different then - for example - planetary imaging you don't have hundreds or thousands frames that are needed to improve significant signal-to-noise ratio. Only sometimes, when seeing is really good, you can get gain of stacking the few usable frames produced of the speedy object.

Hope this helps,
Ralf
« Last Edit: 11/02/2014 08:40 pm by ralfvandebergh »

Offline ralfvandebergh

Satwatcher,

Yes, but because of the manual tracking it's not interesting to show. You will only see an object crossing the field with enormous speed..

Ralf

Offline ralfvandebergh

kevin-rf

Thanks for detailed information!

Ralf

Offline satwatcher

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Hi Ralf,

Yes, but because of the manual tracking it's not interesting to show. You will only see an object crossing the field with enormous speed..

Thanks for the answer. It must be tricky to manually keep these fast moving objects in the field of view.

How do you decide which frame has the best seeing? Is that through the point-spread-function of the stars in the field of view?

Offline ralfvandebergh

Satwatcher,

The hardest targets are the soon-to-reenter objects due to the high angular speed. An Agena at 800 km is doable.

Your question:  I put the best frames manually next to each other and you can see pretty good which of the frames are the best. The detail is sharper and  better contrast in the moments of good seeing.

Ralf
« Last Edit: 11/02/2014 09:05 pm by ralfvandebergh »

Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #10 on: 11/02/2014 09:07 pm »
Oh, well done! Excellent work!

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #11 on: 11/02/2014 10:14 pm »
Really neat. Have you found any of the "heavy ferrets" in orbit?

I'd also like to see a Jumpseat or SDS, although I know those are much more difficult targets.

Offline kevin-rf

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #12 on: 11/02/2014 10:57 pm »
Molniya orbits, I think he will need a larger telescope.
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Offline ralfvandebergh

It could be photographed easily as featureless point of light with a simple camera. But even with a larger scope it will probably not be resolved. Remember we have an atmosphere were you look through..you will need Hubble for that. Capturing detail in an object at the size of an upper stage at 800 km is challenging enough with any telescope from Earth.

Ralf

Offline satwatcher

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #14 on: 11/03/2014 08:09 am »
Your question:  I put the best frames manually next to each other and you can see pretty good which of the frames are the best. The detail is sharper and  better contrast in the moments of good seeing.

Hmmm... I'm a bit skeptical of manually picking the frames which are 'best' during moments of good seeing. Are you not afraid that wishful thinking takes over and instead you pick only those frames which match what you are expecting?

Since the atmosphere is so turbulent I would think you can only really get good high resolution imaging by averaging lots of frames.

Thierry Legault has some good info on how to do this high resolution imaging right and how to do it wrong.
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/bad_astrophotography.html
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/technique.html
« Last Edit: 11/03/2014 08:09 am by satwatcher »

Offline Silmfeanor

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #15 on: 11/03/2014 08:18 am »
Your question:  I put the best frames manually next to each other and you can see pretty good which of the frames are the best. The detail is sharper and  better contrast in the moments of good seeing.

Hmmm... I'm a bit skeptical of manually picking the frames which are 'best' during moments of good seeing. Are you not afraid that wishful thinking takes over and instead you pick only those frames which match what you are expecting?

Since the atmosphere is so turbulent I would think you can only really get good high resolution imaging by averaging lots of frames.

Thierry Legault has some good info on how to do this high resolution imaging right and how to do it wrong.
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/bad_astrophotography.html
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/technique.html
I vaguely remember having some discussions about this problem not only with pictures from Ralf - which we have discussed previously!  - but also with pictures from Thierry.
Someone has the links?

anyway, thanks for the amazing pictures and welcome to the forum!

Offline kevin-rf

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #16 on: 11/03/2014 01:20 pm »
I vaguely remember having some discussions about this problem not only with pictures from Ralf - which we have discussed previously!  - but also with pictures from Thierry.
Someone has the links?

anyway, thanks for the amazing pictures and welcome to the forum!

It was brought up in the KH-11 thread: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29545.msg1101690#msg1101690

His KH-11 image: http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-debris/astrophotography/view-keyhole-satellite/

Dust up from his images of NanoSail : http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/nanosail_vandebergh_analysis.html

That said, the image is very impressive.
If you're happy and you know it,
It's your med's!

Offline ralfvandebergh

The technique works pretty well for me, see demonstrated in the sequences of ATV-5 and ISS in attachment. Note thin solar panels of the ATV (about 1 meter thin).

Ralf
« Last Edit: 11/03/2014 01:40 pm by ralfvandebergh »

Offline ralfvandebergh

Another example attached. This is IGS-1b shortly before reentry. The detail of every single frame compares well. No doubt for me.

Ralf
« Last Edit: 11/03/2014 01:51 pm by ralfvandebergh »

Offline Danderman

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Re: Agena-D rocket from the 1960's photographed in Earth orbit
« Reply #19 on: 11/03/2014 01:52 pm »
An interesting object is

COSMOS 382


    NORAD ID: 4786
    Int'l Code: 1970-103A

Part of the Soviet lunar program.

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