Re: [APML] OT: Satellite orbital taxonomy

["Philipp Salzgeber" <philipp@salzgeber.at>]

according to a short search with Google 10mu is the N-Band, blackbody
radiaton of objects between 100-1000K peaks near this wavelength. Silicate
Dust has an absorption line at 9.7 mu... could it be that the satellite is
shrouded in a cloud of finely grained sand = dust?

<end of wild guessing>

Philipp Salzgeber


----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt BenDaniel" <matt@starmatt.com>
To: <astro-photo@seds.org>
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 6:02 AM
Subject: Re: [APML] OT: Satellite orbital taxonomy


> At 11:57 PM 5/23/2002 -0400, Matt BenDaniel wrote:
> >At 11:19 PM 5/23/2002 -0400, Matt BenDaniel wrote:
> >>At 08:38 PM 5/23/2002 -0500, Paul M. Rybski wrote:
> >>>     If you wanted to look down on an enemy's installations 24/7 but
didn't want him to successfully detect you by diffuse reflection off of
satellite surfaces or by Kelvin retroreflection off of your solid state
detectors when he painted you with a pulsed laser and looked for reflections
synchronously at the time of the expected return pulse, what would you hide
the satellite behind?  (Hint:  What would make you invisible most of the
time but glint brightly at only one orientation with respect to you and to
the Sun?)  (Another hint: This object was the brightest infrared source in
the sky -- after the Sun, of course -- at 10 microns.  How could it be so
bright in the IR but nearly invisible in the visible?)
> >>
> >>Use highly reflective flat surfaces. A cube shape would do it. You must
keep the faces from pointing straight down to Earth. The satellite is bright
at 10 microns because there is a 10 micron background glow in every
direction.
> >
> >No, no, the last part of my answer is wrong. If it reflected background
radiation it would look just like the background. It must be blackbody
radiation.
>
> Doh. No, that can't be it either. Blackbody radiation at 10u would not be
intense. How does the satellite downlink? 10u RF (highly encrypted of
course)?
>
> --
> Matt BenDaniel
> matt@starmatt.com
> http://starmatt.com
>
>
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