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Eye in the Sky

1843magazine.com

154 pointsjmstfv23 comments

The text at the last image doesn't seem right, I think the stripes are stars and the little dots are geostationary satellites. If the photographer took a fixed long exposure the earth would rotate and the stars would move against the sky, but because the satellites are in a geostationary orbit they move with the earth's rotation so it looks like they don't move at all.

But with a motorized equatorial mount, the stars would stay in the same positions. Nonetheless, I came to the same conclusion that you did because there should be more stars than satellites and the stars should be brighter (by far) than the satellites.

Here is Trevor explaining this image in his presentation:

https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5604_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312282...

Spy satellites aren't geostationary, they're on a polar orbit. There's a bunch of them staggered out to allow photos of anywhere within some max time interval.

Yes you would be correct if we were talking about imaging satellites, but communication spy satellites would be in geostationary orbit :)

Ok. I guess a time lapsed photo should show polar orbit sats as long streaks on the y axis and stars as short streaks on the x axis and geostationary sats as bright dots.

Not necessarily, the Molniya orbit is a thing. (Most wars these days are fought at low latitude, though, so this orbital arrangement has cone out of fashion, except to supply TV signal to Siberia.)

TIL - The Tundra (and Molniya) orbits are really interesting highly eccentric geosync (demigeosync) orbits that spend most of their time at high inclination perigee to allow clear line of sight transmission above 1 (or 2 locations) on Earth. This is useful since geostationary satellites are low angle at high latitudes and more difficult to launch. They are almost always at 63 degrees to avoid orbit perturbation due to gravitational anomalies, but still have to pass through the Van Allen radiation belts 2 (or 4) times per day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit

If you go to http://stuffin.space and filter for the word "Molniya" you still get a beautiful shape out of it. It'll be a while before they all come down.

At the 30c3, Trevor Paglen gave a talk about his work, where he also goes into details or it [1]. I found it highly interesting and can only recommend it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo

> National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Virginia (2014)

I am always surprised how so few people even know this exists. It has a $10B budget on par with NSA and CIA.

I like and am creeped out by their mission patches:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches#/media/Fi... (a crazy gorilla with a US flag in hand)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches#/media/Fi... (giant octopus devouring Earth)

I like and am creeped out by their mission patches

Me too! My favorite:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches#/media/Fi...

    Look at their history on wikpedia; they weren't part of the unclassified alphabet soup till 1992s and do a fair job of staying out of the general noosphere. 
    Yeah they do have some fun with their mission patches :)

PAN isn't short for panopticon, it's short for Palladium at Night.

There's no consensus on which agency operates it (potentially NRO but this may not be the case) or what it's for.

Pan is also the god of wild, shepherds and flocks in greek mythology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)). Which would suite perfectly for watching over the people, who many of those in power just think as sheep who can be controlled.

If you do any research into this subject, you will find many references to different gods, mythologies and other things that are starting to sound like black magic. Just for some examples, see these now famous psyops patches and the symbology used in them: https://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinis...

> PAN isn't short for panopticon, it's short for Palladium at Night.

"Palladium at Night" is indeed on the mission patch. However, in his CCC talk Trevor Paglen says it might mean "pick a name":

https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5604_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312282...

"Pick a name" is also promoted in this Space Review article on the satellite:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1

In about 2002 I lay in my back garden in the night in Palo Alto and saw (naked eye) three satellites flying in formation. I believe it was this: http://www.satobs.org/noss.html#NOSS3

I saw the same thing in the late 90s. Never knew what it was until just now.

Eye in the Sky. Now I have a worm in the ear, thanks a lot! :P

"Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website." with "position: fixed" and 100% size covering perfectly rendered article body. This is ridiculous.

Agree, I was wondering what marvellous web application with all kinds of interactivity could lie beyond that message and it turns out it's just text with a few images.

Add the filter "www.1843magazine.com###seckit-noscript-tag" (minus the quotes) in ublock or another ad-blocker and it won't bother you again. Page works perfectly after that for me.

Or right-click / inspect element and kill (overtype) the tag

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