1. Detection of Thermal Emission at Millimeter Wavelengths from Low-Earth Orbit Satellites
- Author
-
Foster, A., Chokshi, A., Anderson, A. J., Ansarinejad, B., Archipley, M., Balkenhol, L., Benabed, K., Bender, A. N., Barron, D. R., Benson, B. A., Bianchini, F., Bleem, L. E., Bouchet, F. R., Bryant, L., Camphuis, E., Carlstrom, J. E., Chang, C. L., Chaubal, P., Chichura, P. M., Chou, T. -L., Coerver, A., Crawford, T. M., Daley, C., de Haan, T., Dibert, K. R., Dobbs, M. A., Doussot, A., Dutcher, D., Everett, W., Feng, C., Ferguson, K. R., Fichman, K., Galli, S., Gambrel, A. E., Gardner, R. W., Ge, F., Goeckner-Wald, N., Gualtieri, R., Guidi, F., Guns, S., Halverson, N. W., Hivon, E., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hood, J. C., Hryciuk, A., Huang, N., Kéruzoré, F., Khalife, A. R., Knox, L., Korman, M., Kornoelje, K., Kuo, C. -L., Levy, K., Lowitz, A. E., Lu, C., Maniyar, A., Martsen, E. S., Menanteau, F., Millea, M., Montgomery, J., Nakato, Y., Natoli, T., Noble, G. I., Omori, Y., Pan, Z., Paschos, P., Phadke, K. A., Pollak, A. W., Prabhu, K., Quan, W., Raghunathan, S., Rahimi, M., Rahlin, A., Reichardt, C. L., Rouble, M., Ruhl, J. E., Schiappucci, E., Sobrin, J. A., Stark, A. A., Stephen, J., Tandoi, C., Thorne, B., Trendafilova, C., Umilta, C., Vieira, J. D., Vitrier, A., Wan, Y., Whitehorn, N., Wu, W. L. K., Young, M. R., and Zebrowski, J. A.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
The detection of satellite thermal emission at millimeter wavelengths is presented using data from the 3rd-Generation receiver on the South Pole Telescope (SPT-3G). This represents the first reported detection of thermal emission from artificial satellites at millimeter wavelengths. Satellite thermal emission is shown to be detectable at high signal-to-noise on timescales as short as a few tens of milliseconds. An algorithm for downloading orbital information and tracking known satellites given observer constraints and time-ordered observatory pointing is described. Consequences for cosmological surveys and short-duration transient searches are discussed, revealing that the integrated thermal emission from all large satellites does not contribute significantly to the SPT-3G survey intensity map. Measured satellite positions are found to be discrepant from their two-line element (TLE) derived ephemerides up to several arcminutes which may present a difficulty in cross-checking or masking satellites from short-duration transient searches.
- Published
- 2024