Analysis of the possible satellite contamination in LAMOST-MRS spectra

TL;DR

This paper investigates potential satellite and lunar contamination in LAMOST-MRS spectra, identifying false positives in binary star detection caused by reflected sunlight, and proposes methods to mitigate and detect such contamination.

Contribution

It is the first study to identify satellite and lunar light contamination in LAMOST spectra and suggests strategies to reduce and detect this interference in future and archived data.

Findings

Detected false positive SB2 candidates caused by lunar and satellite light.

Identified possible satellite contamination using orbital data.

Proposed measures to mitigate and detect contamination in spectra.

Abstract

We present the detection of false positive double-lined spectroscopic binaries candidates (SB2) using medium-resolution survey (MRS) spectra from the one time-domain field of LAMOST data release 10 (DR10). The secondary component in all these binaries has near zero radial velocity and solar-like spectral lines. Highly likely this is light from the semi-transparent clouds illuminated by the full Moon. However we also suspect that partially this contamination can be caused by a solar light reflected from the surface of low-orbital artificial satellites launched in the beginning of 2022. We found several possible contaminant candidates using archival orbital data. We propose measures to reduce risk of such contamination for the future observations and methods to find it in archived ones.