Mitigation of LEO Satellite Brightness and Trail Effects on the Rubin Observatory LSST

Abstract

We report studies on the mitigation of optical effects of bright low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites on Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). These include options for pointing the telescope to avoid satellites, laboratory investigations of bright trails on the Rubin Observatory LSST camera sensors, algorithms for correcting image artifacts caused by bright trails, experiments on darkening SpaceX Starlink satellites, and ground-based follow-up observations. The original Starlink v0.9 satellites are g ~ 4.5 mag, and the initial experiment "DarkSat" is g ~ 6.1 mag. Future Starlink darkening plans may reach g ~ 7 mag, a brightness level that enables nonlinear image artifact correction to well below background noise. However, the satellite trails will still exist at a signal-to-noise ratio ~ 100, generating systematic errors that may impact data analysis and limit some science. For the Rubin Observatory 8.4-m mirror and a satellite at 550 km, the full width at half maximum of the trail is about 3" as the result of an out-of-focus effect, which helps avoid saturation by decreasing the peak surface brightness of the trail. For 48,000 LEOsats of apparent magnitude 4.5, about 1% of pixels in LSST nautical twilight images would need to be masked.

arXiv commentOriginally 16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to AAS Journals. Revised to 18 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in AJ; v2 addresses referee comments with revised figures, text updates, and additional references. Finally 17 pages, 12 figures, published in AJ; v3 includes final proofing edits and updated metadata

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• Visibility Predictions for Near-Future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes near 50 Degrees will Experience the Worst Light Pollution
• Analytical simulations of the effect of satellite constellations on optical and near-infrared observations
• The future of astronomy with small satellites
• Optical-to-NIR magnitude measurements of the Starlink LEO Darksat satellite and effectiveness of the darkening treatment
• The Impact of Observing Strategy on Cosmological Constraints with LSST
• Satellite Optical Brightness
• Photometric Characterization and Trajectory Accuracy of Starlink Satellites: Implications for Ground-Based Astronomical Surveys
• Plaskett 1.8 metre Observations of Starlink Satellites
• Simultaneous Multicolor Observations of Starlink's Darksat by The Murikabushi Telescope with $MITSuME$
• Automated Detection of Satellite Trails in Ground-Based Observations Using U-Net and Hough Transform
• The Growing Impact of Unintended Starlink Broadband Emission on Radio Astronomy in the SKA-Low Frequency Range
• The Steward Observatory LEO Satellite Photometric Survey
• Astrosat: Forecasting satellite transits for optical astronomical observations
• Satellite shadows through stellar occultations
• A Report to ESO Council on the Impact of Satellite Constellations
• The Brightness of OneWeb Satellites
• The Brightness of VisorSat-Design Starlink Satellites
• A Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function for VisorSat Calibrated with 10,628 Magnitudes from the MMT-9 Database
• Starlink Satellite Brightness -- Characterized From 100,000 Visible Light Magnitudes
• Characterizing the All-Sky Brightness of Satellite Mega-Constellations and the Impact on Astronomy Research
• Diffuse and specular brightness models applied to LEO satellites. Case study: The ONEWEB constellation