3–11 Jul 2025
University of Adelaide
Australia/Adelaide timezone
Please note: Timetable is provisional for the time being!

Detecting and analyzing LEO satellite streaks with MUSE

9 Jul 2025, 10:15
15m
Darling West (University of Adelaide)

Darling West

University of Adelaide

Speaker

Brayden Leicester (University of Canterbury)

Description

The number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites is increasing, and they are having a noticeable impact on the quality of a large range of astronomical data. We use archival data from the Multi Unit Spectrographic Explorer (MUSE) to quantify the effects of satellites on the datacubes. MUSE is an integral field unit (IFU) so it captures a spectrum at every pixel in the field of view. Using the starkiller package we have searched all MUSE quicklook images for spatially resolved satellite streaks and have extracted many satellite spectra from the impacted observations. We find that LEO satellite spectra are diverse and can be modeled as a solar spectrum with variable levels of atmospheric extinction. Through this process we are able to recover the science targets and build a spectral library for LEO satellites which can be used to inform other spectroscopic surveys.

Author

Brayden Leicester (University of Canterbury)

Co-authors

Dr Michele Bannister (University of Canterbury) Ryan Ridden (University of Canterbury)

Presentation materials

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