Hi all, A few days ago I got a surprise announcement from Kevin Fetter, a Canadian SeeSat member. He politely informed me that, if I was interested, in a few days the ISS was going to cross the center of the moon as seen along a line a few km from my home. I more than gladly took up the challenge of dragging myself out of bed this morning after 4 hours of fitful sleep. I took my telescope and a digital-8 video camera (capable of 4 lux) along. The sky was hazy but the moon was sharp as seen through my scope. At the time that Kevin determined that the Station would pass it did, right where it was supposed to! I could clearly see it cross both the dark AND sunlit parts of the moon even though the Station itself was only a magnitude 1.6 (according to H-A ). The moon was 23% illuminated and 25 degrees above the SE horizon. At 31x I didn't detect any shape in the Station's image but I could tell that it was a small extended object. I got the pass on video! Someday I'll get the time to make the video available online. H-A as we discussed in earlier posts did not accurately place the track of the Station across the moon. It showed it passing about 1 degree south of it. Much thanks to Chris Peat all the same! The data I chose to use was as follows: 29 Dec 2002, 11:57:25.70, 42.390, -92.318. That put me at the telescope at 5:57 AM out in a ditch in the country. I'm glad the farm dog that started barking didn't come to take a look. I've been bitten before. To decide where to go I input the coordinates into http://www.topozone.com./finddd.asp . Thanks again Kevin! Clear skies, Tom Iowa USA At home: Latitude: +42.473513 Longitude -92.360413 Meters above sea level: 274 GMT -6 ..... ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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