SNIFFLES I: Intended Emission, Unwanted Emission, and Unintended Radiation from Low-Earth Orbiting Satellites Impacting Radio Astronomy from 1–26 GHz

Clicks: 1
ID: 317627
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal

Ranked #735 of 908 articles by views in monthly notices of the royal astronomical society

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 908 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract We present the first results of SNIFFLES, an ongoing observational programme to characterise intended emission, unwanted emission, and unintended radiation from non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) systems across common radio astronomy receiver bands from 1–26 GHz (L, S, C, X, and K bands). Using the Australian 22m Mopra radio telescope near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, with follow-up observations from a single dish of the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) interferometer and its new BIGCAT backend, we conducted 4629 tracked observations of satellites from four NGSO constellations (Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon LEO, and Guowang), amounting to 375.9 hours of telescope time. Satellite identification was confirmed by correlating detected Doppler shifts with predicted ephemerides. We detected 2345 instances of intended emission, unwanted emission, and unintended radiation at 300+ unique frequencies from three of the four systems. The detections span all three interference classes affecting radio astronomy: (1) intended emission (including Direct-to-Cell), (2) unwanted emission (out-of-band emission, including up to the fourth harmonic of the Starlink DTC signal at approximately 2.6 MHz, with the fourth harmonic detected near 10.5 GHz), and (3) unintended radiation from satellite platform electronics. Several detections fall within primary radio astronomy allocations, including 1613.19 MHz within the protected OH line band, and at 2690.76 MHz and 2700 MHz. At 2700 MHz, unintended radiation was detected in 76.9 per cent of all observations of the relevant satellite version. ATCA follow-up measurements confirm flux densities up to eleven orders of magnitude brighter than typical astronomical sources, well in excess of levels that saturate radio astronomy receivers.
Reference Key
openalex_W7165036488 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors B. Indermuehle, Liroy Lourenço
Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1133
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1133
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.