The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, is shown here as a long streak against a backdrop of stars as it orbits the Earth after its successful launch on 18 December 2019.
The 6-minute long exposure was taken at 13:18 UTC on 11 January 2020 with the 1-m SAINT-EX robotic telescope, located at the National Astronomical Observatory of Mexico at San Pedro Martir, Mexico.
The coordinates of the centre of this 2048 x 2048 pixel image are: right ascension 11h 56m 58.00s and declination +27º 30’ 45.0’’ (J2000). The visible trail seen running from bottom to top in the image is due to sunlight reflected by the Cheops spacecraft, which is in a sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of 700 km and a local time of the ascending node of 6:00am.
The image spans only 12 arcminutes across, so Cheops spent a very short time in the field of view – around 400 ms. The estimated V-band magnitude of Cheops in this image is 8.41.
Magnitude calculation by M. Sestovic, University of Bern.
Note: This caption was edited on 15 January 2020 with an updated value of the estimated magnitude.