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- Compile, document, and reference existing or in-development projects, software tools, and data repositories that directly relate to SatHub.
- Regularly inform the community about the evolving population of satellite constellations and their potential impact to different scientific studies.
- Establish and sustain dialogs with satellite operators, policymakers, and other stakeholders so future satellite design and operation has less unintentional impact on astronomy and dark skies.
- Sustain an accessible, responsive website as an evolving resource to accommodate the present and future needs of astronomy, the space industry, and observers worldwide.
Some examples of SatHub use cases follow. They are intended to be illustrative, but not exhaustive.
- An astronomer is planning an observing run for later in the week, and wishes to schedule high-priority observations of a certain target in a satellite-free viewing window. SatHub enables them to access PassPredict and forecast the windows when an input sky coordinate or field of view will have the fewest satellite crossings.
- An astronomy enthusiast enjoys participating in Zooniverse projects and wishes to help identify images with satellite streaks for a citizen science project. SatHub provides links to such projects and updates on resulting analyses and publications.
- A satellite operator has designed a new darkening treatment and wishes to learn how effective it is. Without revealing proprietary information, they use SatHub to share a list of experimental and control satellites for observers to target. Interested observers subsequently use SatHub to plan their observations and upload, coordinate, and analyze results from the experiment.
- An observer is reducing their CCD data and notices one or more satellite streaks in an image. They use SatHub as a resource for processing the image to minimize impact of the trails, uploading the image to aid in satellite brightness studies, and discussing strategies with others facing similar situations.
- A researcher wishes to use software in the public domain to calculate orbital ephemerides from TLEs (e.g., pyorbital[1] or Skyfield[2]). SatHub provides a place where tutorials or supplemental documentation for these tools can live, allows the researcher to ask questions of more experienced users or developers and begin developing their own software to improve or extend these existing tools.
- A student wishes to write a report on the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy and the night sky. They complete the SatHub core training curriculum and participate in the discussion forum to learn both the historical context and the latest developments, and produce a well-researched report.
An amateur astronomer highly experienced in visual magnitude estimation has meticulously recorded unaided eye brightnesses of satellites over many nights. SatHub allows them to share these observations
SATCON2 Observations Working Group Report
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