I'd like to preface the following remarks by saying that I'm not trying to start an online discussion or anything, so I will be glad to receive email in answer to the following and then post a summary in a few days if that's ok. If this question is indeed a FAQ that has no current answer, I'd be glad to write a summary as an answer as proposed below. Like Martin, I have over the last year gradually gone from interested casual observer to more interested in participating in data collection. I too have found it hard to deduce from the formal postings of data how these data are collected and how the efforts are portioned out. For a long time I couldn't figure out HOW people were making these observations; telescope? binoculars? unaided eye? The VSO pages are very interesting, but not much help except in the most casual sense. I gather from the past year of mailings that there are assigned observing stations, that stopwatches are required, that some satellites are of more interest than others, and that there observation entry programs to convert observations to standard format which can be posted. I assume that observations of the same satellite are pooled among several observers to generate elements. It seems to me that there is something of an anarchic quality to how these things are done, and while I kind of approve of that approach, how all this is done I have not been able to casually discover. I'm not even sure whether there is a strong demand for more observers or whether the observing efforts are more or less saturated. I assume that people kind of get all this information through PVT EMAIL and behind the scenes discussions, and it's true that I haven't yet made a strong effort yet to do this. So at this point I'd second Martin's request for a kind of formal summary of how to go about doing this. I realize SeeSat-L is a low volume list discouraging chatter and encouraging data presentation, and that too is how I like it. But could there be an occasional posting, perhaps made along with Bart's summary of the list's mission, of a sort of a FAQ that orients people interested in doing this kind of thing, or directs them to a page where this is specifically and in detail discussed? Thanks in advance, Wayne Hughes Martin Vičar wrote: > I understood there is agroup of observers and smaller group of > data-collercters in SeeSat-L conference. I want to be an observer too and > help with satelite tracks determinations. And I have one question: What > satelite I should observe? Do exists some web pages with "wanted" satelites? > Or all satellite positional > measurements have the same value? ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Aug 02 2000 - 23:27:10 PDT