Skyfield spotted (Square Kilometer Array burst event traced to a satelite)

[davidmikolas]

"A nanosecond-duration radio pulse originating from the defunct Relay 2 satellite" https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11462

3. Origin of the burst

The 4500 km distance to the burst suggests an Earth satellite as the origin. Using the location of ASKAP, the time of the burst, and the Skyfield python module[1], we searched for a coincidence in time and position on the sky between the burst and Earth satellites. The Two Line Element (TLE) descriptions of Earth satellite orbital parameters were downloaded from the space-track.org catalog, for all satellites in the catalog and for dates two days either side of the observation time. Skyfield was used to propagate the orbital parameters to the observation time and calculate the Right Ascension and Declination for each satellite, as seen from the location of ASKAP. One viable match was found, for NORAD ID 737 (Relay 2)[2]

[1] https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/
[2] https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=737

[brandon-rhodes]

Thanks so much for sharing the article! I'm glad Skyfield wound up working for their project, and giving them a very plausible candidate for the source of their signal. I wonder if I should start a list of other projects that have used Skyfield, so that eventually I have a small scrapbook to look at, of projects that have been able to use it.