Who Was Orbiting Earth Before Satellites?

[imitator]

Karl12
[b]andy06shake[/b]

Maybe this is still happening?

If something truly weird showed up in orbit today, like what Palomar saw in the 1950s, it would probably get flagged and then quietly buried. Most of us would never even know.

3I/ATLAS!!! 
Oh wait, scientist are calling it a comet.  

Anyway... look at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, it's scanning the sky with the worlds largest 3200-megapixel camera, finding thousands of new objects every night. What it’s seeing is incredibly insane... It blows my mind!

Every time it looks up, it detects thousands, maybe millions of new objects.

And yet…

The Rubin Observatory’s formal data rights policy (RDO‑013) explicitly states:
“The proprietary period for Rubin LSST data and data products is two years. Within that time, only Rubin Users can use the data… Rubin data and data releases become public after two years.” https://noirlab.edu/public/media/archive...out129.pdf

All full-resolution data is locked away until 2028–2029... who knows, even longer. 

Only vetted insiders get access. The rest of us?
Just breadcrumbs to play with... publicly funded, but not really public. :P

Every major telescope does this.

There’s still public data out there, that "they" miss ;) People are digging through Hubble, JWST, and Zooniverse, finding things no one can explain. You can even buy your own telescope... real independent, citizen-led research, some of the best stuff out there. :)

But, when scientists like Dr. Beatriz Villarroel start digging into these kind of things, it stops sounding like a crazy conspiracy and a lot harder to dismiss.

[Darkorange]

Every time it looks up, it detects thousands, maybe millions of new objects.

Bizarre stuff indeed.

thinking, with today's tech, how come even an amateur astronomers do not report in masses an odd moving object in orbit? don't get me wrong... i am a believer, simply asking questions as counter argument.

With today's equipment and AI power it should not be an issue detecting one for any who is interested. Someone did it in 1950s, right?

[imitator]

Bizarre stuff indeed.

thinking, with today's tech, how come even an amateur astronomers do not report in masses an odd moving object in orbit? don't get me wrong... i am a believer, simply asking questions as counter argument.

With today's equipment and AI power it should not be an issue detecting one for any who is interested. Someone did it in 1950s, right?

Amateur astronomers do catch odd things now and then. But after looking at what the Rubin Observatory is capturing, it’s clear they’re not tracking everything out there. The sky is just too big and too fast. It’s amazing what they are seeing, no system can catch it all.

And amateurs don’t have 3200 megapixel cameras or billion-dollar sky survey systems. The difference in equipment is like night and day.

I’ve actually caught weird stuff in my own astrophotography. If I see a long light streak or some odd pattern, I usually just assume it’s a satellite or a meteor and move on.

Some stuff probably is caught… but ignored. Every now and then, strange anomalies do make it to Reddit, Twitter/X, or YouTube... but they get buried in the noise.

With today’s tech and AI, it should be easier...
But, if an object doesn’t look like a satellite, or asteroid, etc., it might just get filtered out... who knows, right?

As Avi Loeb has pointed out, it could even get mislabeled as a comet or asteroid and quietly filed away.

Imagine one of those asteroid hunters finds out years later they actually caught an ET anomaly... and now it’s named after them. That’s one way to make history.  

One thing I can say for sure...
After seeing what Rubin is picking up, the sky looks more like a traffic jam than empty space. Blending in wouldn’t take much.

[Darkorange]

And amateurs don’t have 3200 megapixel cameras or billion-dollar sky survey systems. The difference in equipment is like night and day.

And back in 1950th?
Obviously, the astronomer who spotted it did not have 3200 megapixel camera....I hope so...otherwise we are in a real quest here. time traveler?

[imitator]

And back in 1950th?
Obviously, the astronomer who spotted it did not have 3200 megapixel camera....I hope so...otherwise we are in a real quest here. time traveler?

This is the scope they used at Palomar Observatory in the 1950s:  48-inch Schmidt telescope.
It's pretty big for widefield views... it's still there and is fully operational.

It's called the Samuel Oschin telescope.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Oschin_telescope

Construction on the Schmidt telescope began in 1939 and it was completed in 1948. It was named the Samuel Oschin telescope in 1986. Before that it was just called the 48-inch (1.2 m) Schmidt.[sup][2][/sup]

The telescope now serves as the dedicated survey instrument for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a wide-field time-domain survey scanning the entire northern sky roughly every three nights.

Link: The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)