Hello, Hereby the results of my very first attempt in satellite position determinations. Target was Lacrosse 5 (#28646). Two point were secured: 28646 05 016A 0000 G 20050801215010600 17 75 1703581+088770 56 S+020 10 28646 05 016A 0000 G 20050801215020600 17 75 1719132+068890 56 S+020 10 Station: Leiden, the Netherlands, 52 09' 32.2" N, 4 29' 19.8" E (WGS84), +5m. The positions were obtained photographically. A 10 second exposure was made using a Canon Digital Ixus 400 camera. The image was then measured astrometrically using ASTRORECORD software, which is professional grade astrometric software for reducing meteor photographs developed within our Dutch Meteor Society by Marc de Lignie. Reference stars were measured, as well as begin- and endpoint of the satellite trail. This is a first test to see whether it is possible to obtain positions in this way which are accurate enough for analysis. Accuracy of the results will be limited by the accuracy of the camera system, not the software, and the timing accuracy of begin- and end of the exposure. The camera was triggered manually by a button press. There is a delay betweenn the press of the shutter button and the camera starting the exposure; by repeated test photography on a running stopwatch, I determined this delay to be consistently 0.6 seconds - this delay has been taken into account in the timings reported. The image was made from my open room window in the midst of Leiden city. A cropped part of the image with the trail, reduced in resolution because of the file size, can be seen (208 kB jpg) here: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b176/marcoaliaslama/satellites/lacros5.jpg I hope the results reported make sense. If they turn out to be accurate enough, I will contribute more data of this kind in the future. - Marco :-) ----- Dr Marco Langbroek Leiden, the Netherlands, 52 09' 32.2" N, 4 29' 19.8" E (WGS84), +5m e-mail: meteorites@dmsweb.org http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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