I saw ISS in my telescope at about 4:16 UT on 19-Aug-2001 from Mt. Diablo (near Walnut Creek), CA, USA. A 10 inch f/6 newt. (Cave Astrola) with a 25mm Ortho. I saw it approach, I missed the closest part of the pass as I flipped the scope and I watched it recede. I followed it into shadow and far beyond until distance and low altitude caused me to lose it. There must have been a light on! The only problem is that I can't reconcile what I saw (OK, what I remember) with the hundreds of diagrams, photos, virtual reality files, etc. that I have looked at tonight. Here goes: I saw (OK, I recollect) three long rectangles. A big bright one in the middle flanked by two shorter and slightly dimmer ones on each side. The corners were clear and sharp. The long axis was in the direction on motion. Some fuzzy stuff was occasionally seen in between. This appearance was the same coming and going. It was very, very bright! This sounds like Jonathon's description of June 24th: "..central mass/bulge that was flanked on either side by lines - solar panels, I assume." But there shouldn't be three rectangles side by side! Did I make it up or was I so overcome with excitement that I mis-remembered everything? I won't be annoyed if anyone suggests the latter. What I really want is for others to start posting their own observations. One of the things that I couldn't figure out was where the shuttle was attached and what the attitude of the complex was. Oh yes, it was travelling almost exactly away from the sun. I'm going to have to do this again! Randy ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 02:42:41 PDT