The linked article shows a picture of the debris. Just amazing that we can do this for tiny objects that 35,000 km away from us, but apparently it's something that can even be done by amateurs: it's 'just' a matter of keeping the exposure time long enough.
Here's an article about that: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/how-to-see-and-photogr...
There are commercial services that keep visual track of geostationary satellites. A couple of years ago, IIRC, a Russian satellite broke down and there were pictures of the disintegration.