Photographer Documents Secret Satellites — All 189 of Them

Artist Trevor Paglen's time-exposure photographs show the streaks of light left by classified satellites.
Photo: Trevor Paglen

BERKELEY, California -- For most people, photographing something that isn't there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen.

His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit -- despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don't exist. The Other Night Sky, on display at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum through September 14, is only a small selection from the 1,500 astrophotographs Paglen has taken thus far.

In taking these photos, Paglen is trying to draw a metaphorical connection between modern government secrecy and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in Galileo's time.

"What would it mean to find these secret moons in orbit around the earth in the same way that Galileo found these moons that shouldn't exist in orbit around Jupiter?" Paglen says.

Satellites are just the latest in Paglen's photography of supposedly nonexistent subjects. To date, he's snapped haunting images of various military sites in the Nevada deserts, "torture taxis" (private planes that whisk people off to secret prisons without judicial oversight) and uniform patches from various top-secret military programs.

While all of Paglen's projects are the result of meticulous research, he's also the first to admit that his photos aren't necessarily revelatory. That's by design. Like the blurry abstractions of his super-telephoto images showing secret military installations in Nevada, the tiny blips of satellites streaking across the night sky in his new series of photos are meant more as reminders rather than as documentation.

"I think that some of the earliest ideas in the modern period were actually from astronomy," Paglen explains. "You look at Galileo: He goes up and points his telescope up at Jupiter and finds out, hey, Jupiter has these moons."

More significant than the discovery itself, Paglen says, was the idea that anyone with a telescope could verify it and see the same exact thing that Galileo saw -- an idea Paglen is trying to re-create in his own photographs.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/culture/art/news/2008/06/secret_satellites

The nearly vertical streak in this image shows a satellite called Keyhole 12-3 crossing the sky near the constellation of Scorpio.

that is so dense I don't even know where to begin

The stupidity of a secret project creating a patch for itself?

and contracting out to the local seamstress a patch for a top-secret project.

I find that particularly frightening. I also think the department of defense can afford its on iron-on patch machine, so it's most likely done in house.

"top secret patches"? so, some unit that doesn't exist contracts out a badge creation for their "top secret" mission. fuck that action.

from 30 miles away... fucking brilliant. Amazing resource actually.

The Peruvian meteor crash could have been one of this unofficial secret spy satellites