> >Molniya 1-64 20184 x 92 km > >1 15977U 85074A 00040.65654808 .01782425 -50777-5 27938-3 0 612 > >2 15977 61.8758 170.3507 6082369 259.5424 31.7975 4.09062855 51348 > > > >I'd kind of like to see a fair-sized object whose apogee is > >20000km pass through the zenith at a height of 92 km! However, > >I suppose that it might not be very shiny by the time its > >perigee is that low.... > > > >Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA > > Well Ed, it could be glowing at perigee, so shadow pass or not, I suppose > it would be visible. > Tristan Cools Long ago and far away, people who were interested in watching ICBM warheads on the way down used 300,000 feet as the rule-of-thumb altitude for "gas light". I'm not sure where the term came from, but it seemed to mean the onset of significant optical emission from the plasma sheath. So 92 km should be just within the gas light region on that criterion. The Molniya would be moving faster than a warhead, so might be brighter. Probably you'd want to look for oxygen and nitrogen lines. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 11 2000 - 13:45:53 PST