The morning of November 17, 2020 at 5:48 a.m. EST, this image landed on my camera sensor. I say "landed" since I didn’t expect it, unlike the meteors in Leo that I wanted to photograph. In fact, after setting up my camera on a tripod on the crunchy frosty grass of my backyard some two hours prior in the hope of capturing a Leonid meteor or two, I was back in my bed warm, cozy and asleep as the camera clicked away until dawn.
A morning scan revealed this unexpected glint right in the middle of the constellation of Leo. I was later able to identify the object based on the capture time and trajectory compared with known satellite transits. It was the now defunct earth observation satellite, Envisat, that was launched by European Space Agency (ESA) in 2002.
The Envisat mission was concluded in 2012 when it lost contact with the earth, five years after its planned end of life. This school bus sized satellite weighing 8 tons is the largest civilian satellite ever. Five hundred miles above the surface in low earth orbit (or LEO) this piece of zombie tech will continue to orbit the earth for over 100 more years before burning through the atmosphere much like a meteor.
Now for the Leonids.
