Re: Scatha

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Phil Chien informed us:

>SCATHA -  Spacecraft Charging at High Altitude - is a fairly small
>satellite - about 6 ft. tall cylinder, 6 ft. in diameter.

[snip]

>All things considered this is a relatively small geosync satellite so I'm
>rather amazed at the observing skills of those who have seen it.

Some time ago, one of my physicist phriends calculated the minimum optically
observable size of a geosynch satellite.  The answer came out to be somewhat
under 100 cm^2 of matte (aka "Lambertian") white surface.  Since this was in
the US, he liked to take out a 3x5 inch file card, fold it in half, and say,
"That's it."

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