For those interested in Molniyas and/or telescopic tracking of high-altitude satellites, there are four very relevant, related papers listed on a site of the Department of Physics of the Royal Military College of Canada. It's a project called (in English) "CASTOR" -- "Canadian Automatic Small Telescopes for Orbital Research"). The project's stated goal is: "To produce a fully automated satellite tracking network of small telescopes across Canada." Here's the page with links to the four papers: http://www.rmc.ca/academic/physics/castor/HistoryandFuture-e.html The papers describe equipment (telescopes, cameras/CCDs, computer hardware and software), methods of observation and analysis of data, results, and include quite a few interesting photos (one captured two Molniyas captured in one field of view!). There are also illustrations, such as Molniya orbits and ground tracks. For some reason some of the photos of Molniya 1 satellites say they were taken at the United States Air Force (USAF) Museum. When did Russia give the USA a full-size model of the Molniya Type 1?) The first, "early paper" (1997) was cited here on SeeSat before but is now at a different URL. The site has a French version as well as English, but the papers seem to be only in English currently. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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