Sky Brightness Analysis using a Million Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) Observations

Abstract

Brightness of the sky background due to lunar phase and location can dramatically affect the limiting magnitude of astronomical detectors. Formerly, theoretical models have attained limited data sets with 10-20% differences between model and observation. This paper compares and contrasts previous investigations with over a million data points collected from various GEODSS sites located around the world, and attempts to refine predictive modeling of sky brightness for use in scheduling, as well as modeling and simulation tools.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA574432

Entities

People

  • Alan Garner
  • Norman Facas
  • Steve Six
  • Tim Mclaughlin
  • W. J. Mandeville

Organizations

  • MITRE Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Brightness
  • Deep Space
  • Diego Garcia
  • Equations
  • Errors
  • Ground Based
  • Histograms
  • Moon
  • New Mexico
  • Observation
  • Predictive Modeling
  • Simulations
  • Space Surveillance
  • Statistical Sampling
  • Surveillance
  • Twilight

Readers

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Mathematics or Statistics

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects