Tristan Cools wrote: > The Optical Calibration Sphere(2000-04B) was predicted with Satspy to have > a very close pass to the Moon. In fact when I continued to follow it, the > satellite did have a lunar transit ! > > I could not see it at the illuminated side of the Moon but became visible > when it was above the unlit side of the Moon. It went out of transit at > 21h14m53s UTC(April 9). A very short but intense experience ! > > I also have the impression that the OCS sphere isn't very steady. Some > variations are visible on this satellite. Maybe there is still something > attached to it. > Hello It's good to have another transit observation in the database! Some weeks ago I adapted my software to calculate transits with sun and moon, and lunar Iridium flares. I saw 2 transits, but did not succeed to see lunar flares, mainly due to bad weather (I hope so, at least...). For the current elsets (DOY 97) and your position Ryckevelde CalSKY outputs: +21h15m02.3s OCS 26062U 00004B Crosses the disk of Moon. Separation:0.05d Angular diameter: 0.5" spherical, diameter: 3.6m Center line: 2.59km, az:101.8d ESE az: 270.1d W h: 26.2d dist: 1498.8km mag=5.5m The sphere was pretty far away and the angular diameter was at its resolution limits for earthborn observation, hence I'm curious if there exists (unclassified) CCD-images of such small objects projected against the sun or the moon. What puzzles me is the difference in time of about 10 seconds for your observation: what error interval do you expect for the seconds given? This night there are 3 other lunar crossings for this site. Other recent observation reports of transits are welcome! Greetings, Arnold Barmettler www.CalSKY.com (including online calculations of lunar flares, solar/lunar crossings of Mir, ISS, STS) -- -------------------------------------- . ------------------------- Arnold Barmettler, Dipl. Ing. ETH + + Remote Sensing Labs RSL Tel +41 1 635 6525 + . University of Zurich Fax +41 1 635 6842 * . Winterthurerstrasse 190 barmettler@rsl.geo.unizh.ch * CH-8057 Zurich (Switzerland) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 10 2000 - 01:34:45 PDT