Re: USA 144: The Mystery Deepens - Flash Timings Needed

From: Allen Thomson (thomsona@flash.net)
Date: Tue Aug 06 2002 - 15:32:02 EDT

  • Next message: Sven Grahn: "Re: USA 144: The Mystery Deepens - Flash Timings Needed"

    A couple of random thoughts on this thread:
    
    Antennas: Very large antennas will mostly be made of metal or
    metallized mesh, with the holes being somewhat smaller in linear
    dimension than the smallest wavelength the antenna is intended
    to work with. That's still likely to be much larger than the
    wavelength of visible light, and much larger than the typical
    air molecule.  The upshot of this is that visual brightness (on
    a linear scale, W/m^2 or the like), drag and SRP are likely all
    to be proportional to the physical area of the threads of the
    mesh, not the overall dimensions of the antenna. And, therefore,
    proportional to each other.
    
    Solar panels: Just the obvious comment that some observations
    should be made at small phase angles, where brightening and/or
    glints might be anticipated from surfaces normal to the incident
    sunlight.
    
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe'
    in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org
    http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 06 2002 - 15:40:54 EDT