Second-timescale Glints from Satellites and Space Debris Detected with Tomo-e Gozen

Abstract A search for second-timescale optical transients is one of the frontiers of time-domain astronomy. However, it has been pointed out that reflections of sunlight from Earth-orbiting objects can also produce second-timescale “glints.” We conducted wide-field observations at 2 frames per second using Tomo-e Gozen on the 1.05 m Kiso Schmidt telescope. We identified 1554 point-source glints that appeared in only one frame (0.5 s). Their brightness ranges from 11 to 16 mag, with fainter glints being more numerous. These glints are likely caused by satellites and space debris in high-altitude orbits such as the geosynchronous Earth orbit or highly elliptical orbits. Many glints brighter than 14 mag are associated with known satellites or debris with large apogees (>30,000 km). In contrast, most fainter glints are not associated with cataloged objects and may be due to debris with sizes of 0.3–1 m. The event rate of second-timescale glints is estimated to be 4.7 ± 0.2 deg −2 hr −1 (average) and 9.0 ± 0.3 deg −2 hr −1 (near the equator) at 15.5 mag. Our results demonstrate that high-altitude debris can represent a significant foreground in searches for second-timescale optical transients. They also imply that deep surveys such as Rubin/LSST will detect many of these glints in single-exposure images.