CASI ASTRO 2022

During this year’s ASTRO conference I presented my work on analyzing photometric methods to measure Resident Space Objects using the power of Python (specifically with AstroPy Packages).

Abstract

Photometry is in essence the measurement of light from a celestial body, in this case the light reflected off of a Resident Space Object (RSO). An RSO is in the Space Situational Awareness context is any artifical satellite orbiting earth. Characterization of the RSOs is made possible by investigating the light curves produced from photometric measurements.

Significance

In short, a photometrist must know the best way to measure their light sources and how each methods differs. With great help from the Python community, old photometry methods such as the IRAF Starffind algorithm and Emmanuuel Bertin’s Source Extractor are tried against AstroPy’s modern PhotUtil’s SourceCatalog approach for both calcualtion of photometric coefficients and flux measurements of RSOs.

Findings

AstroPy’s new approach with the SourceCatalog offers a much higher detection accuracy of stars ffor the sampled images, with easy to understand tutorials and a suite of tools. When capturing RSOs in Track Rate Mode (tracking the satellite across the sky), SourceCatalog was easily able to calculate the centroid positions of the produced star streaks without prior knowledge of their shape.

Further Reading:

• More to follow!