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)