In a message dated 2/18/01 7:02:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, jayteepee@worldnet.att.net writes: > >Is it possible that Atlantis was flying in a position with the black > bottom >facing the Earth ? This would explane its rather faint brightness. > > At this time the payload bay doors were closed in anticipation of > landing. Also, the orbiter was in various flight profiles during the > day. I assume to minimize heat collection without the payload bay radiators. They may have opened them up again. I observed Atlantis at 00:07 UTC, 19 February at 12 deg elevation in the North. It was visible at 1x and about a +1.5 mag. It passed just over eta Draco at 00:07:58 UTC. The ISS was visible at 1x, taking almost the same track about 2 minutes later - passing just over eta Draco at 00:10:13 UTC. It was copper colored and about +1.0 mag. Cheers, Don Gardner 39.1799 N, 76.8406 W, 100m ASL http://hometown.aol.com/mir16609/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sun Feb 18 2001 - 20:12:36 PST