tles

Contains various TLEs (Two-Line Elements) computed by me (Bill Gray; contact info below). I do this by computing orbital elements using Find_Orb and generating ephemerides; I then do a least-squares-fit of TLEs to those ephemerides, using the eph2tle program distributed with Find_Orb.

The purpose of this is to be able to identify certain high-flying artificial satellites over which asteroid hunters routinely stumble : objects moving slowly enough that it isn't immediately obvious if the object is a slow-moving artsat or a fast-moving near-earth object. If it's the latter, asteroid hunters will be very interested. If it's the former, they would like to ignore it as quickly as possible.

Most of these objects have periods of two days or more, and somewhat elliptical orbits, causing them to appear to move slowly (like asteroids) at apogee. They are either not tracked by Space-Track or are poorly tracked by them. (Space-Track is not particularly interested in objects in multi-day orbits.)

These TLEs are used by my sat_id program used for figuring out which satellite corresponds to a given object found in an image by an asteroid hunter. (sat_id is also in the sat_code repository, and there is an on-line version of sat_id which also uses the TLEs in this repository.) However, these TLEs can be used with any software that uses TLEs... with one minor warning : if your software ignores the ephemeris type indicator in TLEs, you'll get wrong data for some objects in very high orbits (usually orbital periods greater than about three days). Unfortunately, ignoring the ephemeris type indicator is relatively common behavior.

Note that updates will occur as new artsats are found and new observations are made of known artsats.

Maintainer

Bill Gray: (p‮ôç.ötulpťcéjôřp@otúl‬m)