Hi all -
First, a late non-report: a few weeks ago I posted a request for an ephemeris
for the approaching Stardust flyby, and received replies from Mark Hanning-Lee,
Ron Lee, and Tony Beresford - thanks! It was clear that night, and with my
mighty 12.5-inch Newtonian, I made multiple attempts to locate the object over
an 80-minute period (04:50 to 06:10 UT 15 January 2001). No luck. Although
the sky was slightly milky from very light snow flurries blowing in from the
mountains to the west, the limiting magnitude in the 12-inch was around 13.5
(for a moving object). So Stardust must have been fainter than that. I didn't
see any glints, flares, flashes, etc. Did anyone see it visually?
Second, last evening I watched a pass of the STS-98/ISS combo. Here's the
edited Quicksat output:
39.877 105.391 8950. Coal Creek Canyon, CO 2000 14.5 5 F F F T F
H M S Tim Al AziC Dir Mag Dys F Hgt Shd Rng R A Dec
2001 Feb 10 Sat UT
1 32 26 .3 47 328C 91 -1.7 7 9 222 146 295 2348 65.7
The STS/ISS reached magnitude -1 at and past culmination, and remained rather
steady in brightness with a slight yellow/orangish tint.
The best views were with my 3-inch Edmund Scientific "Space Conqueror"
Newtonian reflector (advertised as a "Palomar-type" reflecting telescope in
their 1958 catalog). Years ago I used to track Echo I with this telescope,
with those 20-minute-long passes causing plenty of neck pains. But I
digress....
In the "Space Conqueror" at 30x, hand-tracking to follow the STS/ISS, the
object was clearly double. I've seen the STS/Mir combo as double before, and
have glimpsed structure on the Mir with this telescope, but this time it was a
rather spectacular double star, each component of which seemed to have some
structure. The brighter object was the on the bottom, which I suspect was the
Shuttle (right?)
Fortunately, the morning low temperature of -25 C had warmed up to about 0 C
at the time of the observation.
Unfortunately, the next few days promise plenty of clouds.
Cheers, Rich Keen
Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, USA (39.877N, 105.391W, elevation 2728m)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 11 2001 - 06:25:13 PST