Here is a quick and dirty Excel spreadsheet to compute azimuth and elevation of the Atlas 3B during its ascent to orbit: http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/AC-206/AC-206_look_angles.xls All you need do is enter the lift-off time, and your latitude and longitude. The lift-off time need not be UTC. In the example, I entered it as EST. The co-ordinates of the example are for Washington, D.C., located about half way up the U.S. east coast. The spreadsheet computes azimuth and elevation at 20 s time intervals, for both trajectory altitude scenarios that I discussed earlier. The one for "Low MECO1" assumes the vehicle will be 240 km above the Earth at main engine (i.e. Centaur) cut-off #1; "High MECO1" assumes it will have climbed to 640 km. I suspect that the low scenario is correct. If I have time, I may add R.A. and Dec to the tables. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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