Another Satellite Eclipse Season

This past week another geostationary eclipse season has begun. The SiriusXM satellites are always fun to see because I work on them, but also because three of them fit within the view of my most zoomed out telescope camera lens.

Thankfully, I was able to find the satellites pretty easily with my telescope because they pass very near the Orion nebula. It’s nice having such a large and recognizable object to use to start star hopping. I had found the satellites in under 10 minutes probably. I used 5 second exposures and let the computer run overnight.

Annotations were added in DarkTable, but I didn’t bother changing any exposure or color settings.

These images usually don’t mean much to people not familiar with these satellites because they’re simply points of light that disappear, but I love physically seeing the machines I work on.