Diagnose 18 of 29 Acquisition quality
Satellite trails
A single sharp line crosses one frame, and the stars around it are unaffected.
- At 100 %
The line is thin and straight. The frames before and after it do not have it.
- Causes, most likely first
Satellites
Satellites cross the field as they pass overhead, and they are harder to avoid every year.
FixKeep the subs. Stacking with outlier rejection, across enough subs, removes a line that is in one frame only.
- Looks like, but isn't
Stars trail partway through a sub
A satellite is one line, and the stars stay round. A bump to the rig gives every star a tail.
A cosmic ray hit
A cosmic ray leaves a short, sharp mark, far shorter than a satellite's line.
An aircraft
An aircraft leaves a dashed line from its flashing lights.
- One frame can't tell you
One frame is enough to identify a satellite. Whether the stack will hide it depends on how many subs you have.
- How to confirm the fix
No line in the final stack.
- Sources
No outside source is cited here. The signature, the causes and their order are the atlas’s own, from imaging experience. The order is a judgment of likelihood; no measured frequency is behind it.
In the symptom picker
- A single sharp line across one frame, with the stars unaffectedweight 3
- Only one frame is affected; the ones before and after are fineweight 2
Last updated All 29 failure modes, and the symptom picker