Satellites Spanning the Sky: Solar Scientist Photographs Distant Commercial Satellites with Basic Camera Equipment

This is one section of a long-exposure photograph taken on Kitt Peak, AZ, on January 3, 2001. The photo shows five commercial communication satellites hovering over Kitt Peak, an unidentified "tumbler" satellite presumably moving in a different orbit, and a streak created by the reddish Orion Nebula moving across the frame as Earth rotates during the five-hour exposure. The satellites, identified using data from the Internet, include American Mobile Satellite Co. (AMSC)-1 and Direct TV-1R. Amateur photographer Bill Livingston, a staff scientist with the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory near Tucson, took the image using basic camera equipment.