Sand Hill Optical Telescope ( <scp>SHOT</scp> ) for Space Surveillance and Tracking Observations

ABSTRACT Sand hill optical telescope (SHOT) is an optical sensor dedicated mainly for space surveillance and tracking (SST) activities. The SHOT sensor is operated by the Teplice Observatory that is located 80 km north of Prague, Czech Republic. The SHOT sensor is designed in a manner allowing observations of all SST targets ranging from fast satellites in LEO, through geostationary satellites to near‐Earth objects. The commanding SW allows autonomous operation of the SHOT sensor. It is capable to get an observation request, observing the object, processing the acquired images, and uploading the results during the night automatically. The precise astrometry results allowed it to participate in several ESA projects and became a part of the EU SST network. The paper describes the hardware and software setup of the sensor in detail as well as the observation process and the key difficulties.