Hi all - It was a clear, breezy, and unusually warm night (min temp +16C/60F, quite warm for this elevation), so after looking at Mars, I turned my 12.5-inch Newtonian to look for Chandra X-ray Observatory as it approached apogee. Below is the Highfly output for this object, however, I used a 4-week old NASA JPL Horizons output to actually look for it. At 0700, the Horizons output had Chandra passing between a distinctive pair of 12th-magnitude stars. At the appointed time, I failed to see Chandra between the stars, but less than a minute later, as it pulled clear from the "glare" of those stars, I was able to glimpse it. I tracked it for 20 minutes, during which time it passed by enough comparison stars to get a good magnitude estimate for it. At magnitude 14.4, it was just about what Highfly predicted for it, using a Quicksat standard magnitude of 3.5. This is the most distant (and faintest) human-made object I have ever seen, having had no luck with the NEAR, Cassini, and Stardust fly bys. I may be one of the few people to have seen both this spacecraft and the person for whom it is named, Dr. Chandrasekhar. Back in the 1960's, when I was an astronomy major in college, I went to one of his talks at the University of Chicago. He talked about stellar evolution, and I recall understanding some of his talk, but being rather stumped by some of the details (I was a mere sophomore at the time, and hadn't learned differential equations and such yet). Highfly output (distances in miles): 39.877 105.391 8950. Coal Creek Canyon 2000 17.0 20 2001 Jun 23/24 Sat eve/Sun mornUT 25867 CHANDRA M 3.5 ELDY 4 M2 0 Hrs Min Alt Azi Mag Hgt R A Dec Range 7 15 76 254 14.2 74634 17 15.8 34.4 74753 I SAW MIR ! Perhaps this will be the last message on this topic, unless, of course, someone replies. Back when Mir left us, someone (Jay Respler?) asked for last sightings from mid-northern latitudes (specifically, 40 north). I'm a few minutes south of 40 north, and here's the Quicksat output for my last sighting on the evening of March 12, local time: 2001 Mar 13 Tue UT 152 1229 H M S Tim Al AziC Dir Mag Dys F Hgt Shd Rng R A Dec 2 8 19 .2 14 224C 269 .8 2 0 151 106 503 321-22.2 Mir Mir was faintly visible to the naked eye at magnitude 2 until it slipped behind a mountain wave cloud, never to be seen again (by me). Cheers, Rich Keen Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, USA (39.877N, 105.391W, elevation 2728m) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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