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Many thanks to @nukestrat, @DutchSpace and @trbrtc for pointing out that USA 224 might have taken the image. See also the independent analysis by @Marco_Langbroek at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Aug-2019/0169.html …
Google Earth shows that the launch pad is about 60m in diameter, while the launch pad is about 600 pixels wide in the picture. That suggests a resolution of at least 10cm per pixel, as the original image could have had a higher resolution.pic.twitter.com/T7O76Mu5X4
This resolution is for a range of 382 km. The perigee of Keyhole satellites like USA 224 is around 260 km, so the theoretical resolution could be a factor 1.5 better.
One open question is whether USA 224 observed the El Khomeini Spaceport to track the Safir launch preparations, or to check the aftermath of the failure? Do we know when the failure happened? It must have been before 09:44UTC...
The tweeted one appears to be a SWIR image to me.
Hmm. 10 cm at 382 km is right at the diffraction limit for a 2.4 m aperture. Any sharper would require a larger mirror.
Yep. For green light, talking ~0.05 arc seconds (in practice, Hubble with the same sized mirror only does ~0.1 arc seconds). 10 cm at 382 km is 0.054 arc seconds.https://twitter.com/Gergyl/status/1116099706768150528?s=20 …
If the US wanted to risk flying another stealth drone over Iran, surehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident …
The pixels in this are the pixels of the cell camera that took the photo, though, not the pixels of the original image
That's just what I thought. You have to look at the real information in it to determine the real resolution. Just like in handy cams. Tiny sensors, very low pixel pitch so small, the tiny lenses have no way of delivering an adequately sharp image to capture.
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