aat Acta Astrophys. Tau. Acta Astrophysica Taurica 2712-925X Kiselev Nikolai Nikolaevich, Mosсow, settlement Moskovskii, Tat'yanin Park Str., 12, Moscow, Russia. RU 44 10.34898/aat.vol3.iss2.pp1-7 Reviewes Observations of artificial space objects with the 2.6 m Shajn Telescope at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory Rumyantsev V.V. Biryukov V.V. Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, Nauchny, 298409 Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, Nauchny, 298409 15 06 2022 3 2 1 7 15 06 2022 Copyright (c) Rumyantsev V., Biryukov V. Rumyantsev V., Biryukov V. The metadata for this submission is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyright and publishing rights for texts published in Acta Astrophysica Taurica is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal.Texts are free to use with proper attribution and link to the licensing (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

The paper provides an overview of studies of artificial objects in the near-earth space, which have been carried out with the Shajn telescope since 2005. One of the study objectives was to develop a technique for observing and cataloging small objects (∼10–25 cm) in the geostationary orbit with a brightness of 18–20 m . Despite the strong limitation of observational time, the use of Shajn telescope for solving this problem was quite effective. It is shown that it is possible to detect and catalog small-size objects in the geostationary orbit even with a telescope with a small field of view (∼8–12 arcmin). A new modern device (panoramic CCD photometer) was created and placed at the prime focus of the Shajn telescope to solve tasks of searching for faint, highly variable, “dynamic” objects. In the period from 2011 to 2021, the Shajn telescope carried out observations of distant spacecrafts Spektr-R, Gaia, Spektr-RG, and Mars-2020. Particular attention was paid to the Russian astrophysical observatory Spektr-RG in the halocentric orbit around the L2 Lagrange point of the Sun – Earth system. Observations of this scientific spacecraft are continuing to this day. The accuracy of the obtained astrometric estimates is such that the median values of root-meansquare errors in right ascension and declination are 0.055" and 0.075", respectively. The Mars-2020 spacecraft on the flight trajectory to Mars was observed at a distance of up to 6.5 million km as an object of 21.8 m . The task of observing distant spacecrafts remains relevant for identifying artificial objects among numerous natural ones detected in the near-earth space.

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