Recently, the question was asked regarding the maximum number of consecutive ISS passes visible in the same night (i.e. sunset to the next sunrise). It seems to me that for such maxima to occur, it helps if the satellite is in constant sunlight during its entire orbit and I was curious how often this arises. Using simplifying assumptions (e.g. refraction is ignored and the earth's shadow is a right circular cylinder of radius in the range 6356.75 - 6378.14 km), I found that since its launch, the ISS has had episodes of being in sunlight the entire orbit a couple of times or so each year: "Maybe" Definitely 1998 Nov 23-Nov 25 Nov 24 1999 Jan 20-Jan 22 Jan 20-Jan 22 1999 Jun 18-Jun 23 Jun 19-Jun 23 1999 Nov 17-Nov 18 2000 Jan 13-Jan 17 Jan 13-Jan 16 2000 Jun 08-Jun 13 Jun 09-Jun 12 2001 Jan 02-Jan 06 Jan 03-Jan 06 2001 May 31-Jun 05 Jun 01-Jun 04 2001 Jul 31-Aug 01 (The "Maybe" dates are assuming the satellite is always at its apogee and the earth's shadow radius is 6356.75 km; the "Definitely" dates assume a shadow radius of 6378.14 km and the ISS being at its perigee.) I just though this would be of interest. Clear and dark skies! Ed Light Lakewood, New Jersey, USA 40.1075N, 074.2312W, +24m (80 feet) ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sun Aug 05 2001 - 14:50:48 PDT