This sent in at 06:42 CEST by Marco Langbroek, Leiden, NL. Marco wrote:
The video of the 1:47 CEST ATV-4 pass over Leiden has been uploaded; ATV-4, faint at first but quickly brightening, rises just right of the house in the opening scene of the video. From 50 seconds in the video onwards, you can see a second fainter object preceding the ATV. This must be the Ariane upper stage (or a fairing?).
In the last seconds of the video, when ATV-4 is descending towards the roof, you can see another fainter object coming from the right. This is the US Navy satellite NOSS 2-3 E. The two apparently seem to “collide”! (in reality, they were at quite different orbital altitudes and nowhere near each other).
What a wonderful night this was! And now I desperately need some sleep…
Marco says the original video is of slightly better quality than the youtube version, and he’ll share that later.
Thanks, Marco, for sharing your excellent work!
PS: Read his excellent earlier post: “Guide to photographing ATV Albert Einstein from your backyard“
Discussion: 3 comments
So Daniel, your operational control people should be able to tell you (and me) whether the second fainter object just in front of the ATV 4 indeed was the Ariane upper stage, as I suspect?
Okay, SSC (“NORAD”) has now published orbital elements for the ATV and the Ariane upper stage ( catalogue entries 39175 and 39176 resp.). It confirms that the object just in front of the ATV indeed is the Ariane upper stage.
Hi Marco:
Yes, Nathalie at ATV Flight Dynamics also confirms: “We confirm that with our TLE giving us the orbital elements of EPS and ATV the EPS is ahead of the ATV. At the time of the video (23:46:52 GMT) the EPS is about 4 seconds ahead, which corresponds to our analysis at ATV-CC.” — Nathalie