Thanks to Ralph McConahy's forwarding of the Major Mission Events (Event Times and Values) for Monday morning's Minotaur TacSat-2 Mission from Wallops Island, VA., I was able to calculate potential viewing circumstances for New York City. All times are Eastern Standard. EVENT TIME ALT. AZ. ----------- ------- ------- ----- S1 SEP. S2 IGN 7:01:01 4.1-deg. 161.1-deg. S2 SEP 7:02:13 18.0-deg. 179.2-deg. S3 IGN 7:02:15 18.2-deg. 179.8-deg. S3 SEP 7:07:41 6.0-deg. 118.7-deg. S4 IGN 7:07:52 5.5-deg. 118.4-deg. S4 BURNOUT 7:09:00 1.4-deg. 115.8-deg. In an e-mail to me, Ralph said that he " . . . doubted that the fourth stage ignition would be visible from the US," but my calculations show that from New York it will take place just over 5-degrees above the east-southeast horizon and incidentely, almost directly above the position of the Sun (which will rise just over a minute later). If you plot these positions out, the rocket rises sharply out of the south-southeast horizon toward the upper right, reaches a peak altitude of nearly 20-degrees above the southern horizon, then seems to nearly "pause" around the time of second stage separation and third stage ignition . . . then turns abruptly down and to the left toward the southeast horizon and toward the rising Sun. It will be interesting to see how much of this will be readily visible for us New Yorkers. -- joe rao ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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