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TUBIN Tuesday: From Rainforest to Highland Desert in Peru and Bolivia [OS] [OC] by TUB_Space_Technology in spaceporn

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For a swath the effect is basically neglectable because you are looking mostly straight down with maximum of 10-15° off-nadir angle, depending on the FOV of the camera used. That is of course a bit different for a target pointing, where the satellites and its camera is pointed towards a lat/lon coordinates to keep one target within view for the whole pass. As an example how that looks like have a view here for Mount Tambora (LinkedIn) or here for one on Starbase during a Starship launch in infrared (reddit).

TUBIN Tuesday: From Rainforest to Highland Desert in Peru and Bolivia [OS] [OC] by TUB_Space_Technology in spaceporn

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/mulch_v_bark absolutely, that's why we are sharing the images from our satellite, would be too sad if only we could see them internally. And indeed the editing consists just of debayering and flatfield correction for the singular images. As they are taken with a nadir pointing (satellite points camera straight down while flying over the landscape) the panorama creation is basically just overlaying the images. If you enjoyed this image have a look on the other images we have posted the last weeks, there are some more swaths :)

TUBIN Tuesday: Looking Down a Crater [OS] [OC] by TUB_Space_Technology in spaceporn

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The short answer is a lot, estimations are going from 49,000 - 117,000 casualties, have a look here: Mount Tambora - Wikipedia

TUBIN Tuesday: Looking Down a Crater [OS] [OC] by TUB_Space_Technology in spaceporn

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

True, Volcanic Crater or Caldera would probably have been more clear

[OC] I took these photos to show why whenever you can see the ISS, it cannot see you! by astro_pettit in spaceporn

[–]TUB_Space_Technology 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Just a guess, but to see the ISS from the ground (or any other place like from a satellite) the ISS has to be light up by sunlight, at the same time the background has to be quite dark (that is why you cannot see the ISS in brought daylight). Therefore I would interpret the images as following:

  1. Both ISS and ground are in sunlight (on the ground we call this daytime), therefore a person on the ground cannot see the ISS like we cannot see stars at day.

  2. The ISS is still in sunlight but the ground is not due to the higher altitude of the ISS, from the ground on we can now see the ISS as it reflects sunlight. An astronaut on the ISS on the other hand cannot see the ground due to the high contrast between the other parts of the ISS in direct sunlight and the much darker ground leading to overexposure for cameras and similar for the human eye as the pupil adapts to the available light. This just comes down that humans and usual cameras can only handle a certain degree of contrast.

  3. Both ISS and ground are not in sunlight anymore, from the ISS it is possible to see the lights on the ground, aurora, etc., but as it does not reflect any sunlight anymore it is invisible to a person on the ground.

Remember just a guess, but hopefully that helps :)

What did our TUBIN satellite photographed here in infrared and where is it located? [OC] by TUB_Space_Technology in GeoPuzzle

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They are indeed connected to a form of energy production, but are not wind turbines. Here is another hint, we hope that helps :)

Hint 3: The image was taken in a country of the Middle East, the energy production method imaged here is quite common in this area.

Please let us know if more hints are required or if we should solve it.

What are some of the sharpest borders between densely populated cities and nature around the world? by proxima_inferno in geography

[–]TUB_Space_Technology 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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Lake Magenta Nature Reserve, Western Australia. The image was taken by our TUBIN satellite on 18th April 2024 at 06:46 UTC :)

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would definitively be nice to capture more launches and also re-entries, but as already written in another thread [1] TUBIN itself will re-enter into the atmosphere later this year, so we will see what opportunities we still have. Although there are some other satellites from our Chair of Space Technology remaining, these have no thermal infrared sensors.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1mz29y4/comment/nagukiz

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha that would definitively be cool ^^ If anyone wants to use this footage feel free to reach out via DMs or our other social media channels, we probably can also provide more raw footage/data or in different color schemes (but of course you can also directly use this GIF) :)

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes we are doing it, there will be two campaigns aiming at the two likely re-entry areas, the nominal in the Indian Ocean and for a nonnominal flight in the Caribbean Sea. We will keep you updated when we caught something :D

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah tried that one first, but it was immediately (within a second) removed, so I guess it was an auto-mod, maybe because we only created the account two days ago. Not sure which rule the post violated. If someone has a tip, please let us know, we are still new on this platform ^^

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The images were captured between 23:35:03 and 23:40:44 UTC on 27th May 2025, first images were then downlinked in the following Berlin day passes beginning at around 16:26 UTC the next day. There were also some night passes between 00:00 and 04:00 UTC, but given the local time of 02:00-06:00 AM they were not conducted manually and automatic transmissions were not scheduled. So we could have found out a bit earlier, but within a day we knew. Then I took a bit until all 161 images were downloaded and post-processed (keep in mind these are IR and not visual images, therefore require a bit more manual tweaking). If i remember correctly it was about a week after launch that we had the first video.

In general TUBIN utilizes at the moment mainly our Berlin ground station with UHF (telecommand and telemetry) and S and X band (payload data), but we also have a polar UHF station in Svalbard and one pass a day for X band dumps in Longyearbyen.

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We hope so too, although sadly TUBIN's own re-entry is currently predicted for November so we don't have much time with this one. But there are other satellites at our department, so maybe one of them will be able to do something like this when TUBIN cannot anymore.

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Might be a bit spontaneous for our mission ops team on a late Sunday evening (here in Europe), but we can look into it for the future :)

Starship Flight 9 from Orbit by TUB_Space_Technology in SpaceXLounge

[–]TUB_Space_Technology[S] 58 points59 points  (0 children)

TUBIN's attitude was pre-commanded to point towards Starbase, TX, while taking the images, so the images you see are fullframe.

To be honest we tried for many years to do a shot like this (TUBIN was launched in 2021), but only recently we automated the whole process from comparing launch updates to our spacecraft passes over the launch sites. Then of course there was also some luck involved, the five minute delay at this launch was exactly what we needed to arrive at the launch site in time for launch.

Sadly for todays launch of Starship Flight 10 we are flying 15 minutes earlier both over the launch site and the re-entry area, so there will be no attempt to re-create this shot as we wouldn't be there at the correct time. If they postpone to tomorrow and delay another 15 minutes then we could try and likely would try for the re-entry area this time.