Two weeks ago, the US Naval Reconnaissance Office launched NROL-37, a spy satellite designed for some unspecified task to "support national security." Now, it appears that amateur astronomers have already located the position of NROL-37 in the sky. The satellite seems to be in a geosynchronous orbit off the coast of Malaysia.

So how was the satellite spotted so quickly? The method is surprisingly simple. Take a camera outside at night, and set it for a long exposure. Any star that doesn't appear to "move" during the long exposure time is some sort of object in geosynchronous orbit with Earth. Naturally occurring geosynchronous orbits are incredibly rare (so rare that Pluto and Charon are the only examples we've discovered so far), so you can safely assume anything moving in time with the Earth's rotation is manmade.

NROL-37 is suspected to be the seventh of the Mentor spy satellites, which passively detect radio signals. The previous six were launched between 1995 and 2012, and orbit near the equator, from the mid-Atlantic to Indonesia.

Dr. Marco Langbroek, one of the members of the team that located the satellite, notes that the current location of NROL-37 is temporary, and that the satellite appears to be drifting west. He believes the satellite's final location will be over either Sri Lanka or central Africa. The current location over Malaysia is likely to help it link up with the Pine Gap Joint Defense Facility in central Australia, one of the NRO facilities that monitor the Mentor satellites.

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