Optical 02 Jan 2013

grr@telkomsa.net

Observations 02 JAN 2013
----------------------------

Cosatrak 1 (Computerised satellite Tracking System).

MINTRON low light level CCD surveillance camera (0.005
lux typical in non integration mode) and 0.00005 lux in STARLIGHT
mode with 128 frame integration.)

Used with 80mm focal length f/2.8 NIKOR lens. Field of view
4.15 x 2.97 degrees. Mag 11.5 stars visible in real time image

Individual frames are video time stamped with GPS derived signal.
Images processed and measured manually.

Site 0433 : Longitude 18.51294 deg East, Latitude -33.94058 deg,
Elevation 10 metres-situated in Pinelands (Cape Town),South Africa

FOR CLASSFD.TLE:
-----------------------
21775 91 076A   0433 G 20130102192456200 56 15 0445489-113704 19
21775 91 076A   0433 G 20130102192613000 56 15 0453540-063832 19
21775 91 076A   0433 G 20130102192721100 56 15 0500182-023718 19
24680 96 072A   0433 G 20130102195216300 56 15 1249450-623931 19
24680 96 072A   0433 G 20130102195310300 56 15 1152051-650623 19
24680 96 072A   0433 G 20130102195433500 56 15 0914549-631005 19
24680 96 072A   0433 G 20130102195717400 56 15 0513158+041652 19
26906 01 040B   0433 G 20130102190119400 56 15 2117450-144401 19
26906 01 040B   0433 G 20130102190242900 56 15 2108584-243618 19
26906 01 040B   0433 G 20130102190338700 56 15 2059246-315041 19
32706 08 010A   0433 G 20130102184629800 56 15 0019558-624545 19
32706 08 010A   0433 G 20130102184759700 56 15 0048291-745724 19
32706 08 010A   0433 G 20130102184916000 56 15 0239296-842636 19
32706 08 010A   0433 G 20130102185019900 56 15 0911063-843134 19
35937 09 052A   0433 G 20130102201017900 56 15 0231210-820843 19
35937 09 052A   0433 G 20130102201022400 56 15 0254211-815354 19
35938 09 052B   0433 G 20130102195956800 56 15 0530380-834546 19
35938 09 052B   0433 G 20130102200024200 56 15 0632134-785738 19
35938 09 052B   0433 G 20130102200106000 56 15 0707217-703254 19

NORTH KOREAN OBJECTS:
-----------------------
39026 12 072A   0433 G 20130102194809300 56 15 0755345-522248 19
39026 12 072A   0433 G 20130102194912900 56 15 0609066-220653 19
39026 12 072A   0433 G 20130102195000400 56 15 0521309+034210 19
39027 12 072B   0433 G 20130102201017900 56 15 0206164-825031 19

STRAYS SEEN:
--------------------
12646 81 075B   0433 G 20130102195433500 56 15 0913399-641424 19
26066 00 004F   0433 G 20130102195507600 56 15 0811187-592117 19

NOTES:
-------
(1) Continuing investigating video software and found something
    a little puzzling. I have two recording systems - both from
    the same video feed which enters the DVD recorder and goes
    through the recorder ( I dont think its processed in any way)
    and take the signal out via the S-Video output which is then
    fed into my Satellite TV card (COMPRO 350S) in the PC. Using
    the software UFOCAPTURE the video is captured using PICVideo
    compression. This produces rather large AVI files but quality
    as good as the original.

    Meanwhile the DVD recorder is recording in FINE mode ( highest
    quality) and producing a VOB file at roughly 1 Gbyte per 15
    minutes.

    I originally started measuring the video from the PC capture
    as this looked the better quality but found that the image scale
    was very non-linear - in fact I found it difficult to fit an
    image scale to the captured video frames.

    Since I was familiar with the lens used I did not think it was
    due to the lens. I used the video player called SPlay -- as one
    can step through an AVI video frame by frame.

    I then gave up in disgust because of the irregular scale and
    had a look at the VOB recording from the DVD recorder using an
    excellant piece of software- free- called MPEG2CUT2. Besides
    being able to adjust brightness,contrast and gamma one could
    step frame by frame as well as jump forward or backward in small
    increments. One could also easily extract a piece of the video
    which is saved as an MPEG -- very nice software.

    I found the image scale to be pretty constant across the field
    and despite the background noise - more than that from the PC
    where I found a magnitude limit of about mag +11.0 - I found that
    the VOB recording got down to magnitude +11.5.

    So the puzzle is - where does the messing up of the image scale
    take place?

    Cheers
    Greg

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