Re: Observations of NEAR

Jay Respler (jrespler@injersey.com)
Tue, 20 Feb 1996 00:40:06 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Jim Scotti wrote:

> With the help of George Lewis at JPL, we were able to get images of the 
> NEAR spacecraft about 15-16 hours after launch on Sunday morning using 
> the Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak.  Robert Jedicke carried out the 
> observation, getting 6 images over a bit more than half an hour.  The 
> spacecraft and its booster appear as 2 faint trails in the images, the 
> brighter being around V magnitude 20.0-20.5 while the fainter is about a 
> magnitude fainter.  The spacecraft was between about 310,000 and 320,000 
> kilometers from Earth at the time.  I have made the images available as a 


Good job!  Is this a record distance for observation of a spacecraft?


              JRespler@InJersey.com
Jay.Respler@bytewise.org        Voice 908-431-1464
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