GEO Satellite Eclipse Season Begins Again

Every spring and fall geostationary satellites fall into the shadow of the Earth for roughly an hour each night. This means I can photograph them seemingly disappearing from the sky.

I chose to pick a day early in the season so the disappearance from the sky would only be a short period of time. I set up my telescope to take 2.5 second exposures. With a full moon it was difficult to predict the right exposure, but thankfully the full moon didn’t start washing out the frames until after the eclipse took place.

I adjusted image levels in darktable, and then compiled the frames into a video with a python script.

And here’s the result in a faster GIF.

Update September 2nd:

I had 1 more clear night so I wanted to try again, this time with the frame lined up a little nicer. This time I did 2 second exposure times, and the full moon had moved off enough that I got some good results!