Kevin... I saw the two vehicles make a pass over Cincinnati, Ohio, the evening of July 18th while they were docked. The Cincinnati Astronomical Society held their club meetings on the third Friday of the month back then, so we were gathered at the club grounds west of Cincinnati (not at the Cincinnati Observatory) for our meeting. One of the members in attendance knew that we were going to have a descending node pass, so the whole group took a break from the meeting and went outside to observe the pass. I recall the fast rate of travel across the sky, and I also have a dim memory of one end being brighter than the other, but that may not have in fact been the case. 1975 was a long time ago! Two days later, my father and I drove across the Ohio river to Kentucky to observe another pass that was supposed to be further south than the one I had observed on the 18th, but we did not see the vehicles. They were probably undocked at that point, but I think the sky was hazy or cloudy. The Cincinnati Astronomical Society had a very active Moonwatch group in 1961, but their activity faded quickly when the guy who was the driving force behind the group left the area. In 1975, several members who were in the Moonwatch group were still involved with the club, and at least one of them could compute ephemerides using computers at Proctor and Gamble or the GE jet engine plant. I can't remember the name of the guy who provided the information for the pass, but I recall seeing a print out on the old fan-fold paper that was in vogue back then. I understood what some of the numbers on the print out meant because I was just getting into satellite tracking then, having recently tried to understand a copy of "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" by Bate, Mueller and White. The book was given to me by a cadet at the US Air Force Academy with whom I traded letters after my parents picked him up on a very rainy, cold night in Cincinnati in '74 while he was hitchhiking in uniform. I better cut this off... Sorry for the dissertation, Ted! Mike Murphy Dayton, Ohio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20140222/a327f699/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Sat Feb 22 2014 - 15:51:30 UTC
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