Brian wrote: > I attemped to observe the Messenger spacecraft this evening > from my well lit skies of Orange Country, CA but had no luck. > > Using the Horizons ephemeris generator and sky chart software > I star hopped to the right area and observed through my 6 > inch newtonian at 30x. Limiting magnitude was close to 11 > until the moon rose high enough to start lighting up the > moisture in the air. > > Using Ted's formula I had a predicted magnitude of 10.3 but I > was unable to see it. It was much fainter than that. For your location, on 2004-Aug-04 at 04:00 UTC, Horizons predicted: RA/Dec 19 24 28.87 +32 31 18.6 Az/El 82.2123 59.9015 Delta 0.0023719032 A.U. S-T-O 54.3828 deg My formula (see URL below) estimated mag 19, accurate to within one or two magnitudes. http://satobs.org/seesat/Jul-2004/0281.html Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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