SMuK 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 115: Gamma Astronomy V

T 115.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 23. März 2023, 16:20–16:35, POT/0151

Satellite trails in H.E.S.S. data — •Thomas Lang, Alison Mitchell, and Samuel Spencer for the H.E.S.S. collaboration — Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics

The commercialization of space by private companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb has caused the number of satellites launched in low earth orbit to almost triple to over 4000 in the last three years. 17 constellations with over 400,000 total satellites are planned/proposed, which causes major concerns for ground based astronomy. The impact on Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) has been assumed to be low and apart from the brightest trails has not been considered as a significant problem.
This work aims to find and quantify satellite trails in data taken by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), determine which observation times and directions are affected the most, giving a prediction for these effects depending on the satellite numbers and determine whether trails have an impact on the Hillas parameters used to reconstruct high energy particle events.
Trails are found in night sky background (NSB) maps of FlashCam data, the latest camera of the largest telescope (CT5) with a 0.1 s NSB mapping rate, and from this inferred for the other smaller telescopes (CT1-4). Comparisons of the distributions of Hillas parameters will be made of during and around satellite trail passing times.