RE: Endeavour, Mir, perhaps Soyuz, no TRMM

jhunt@Radix.Net
Fri, 30 Jan 98 22:34:48

--- On Fri, 30 Jan 1998 19:13:37 -0800  Mark Hanning-Lee 
<markhl@prodigy.net> wrote in part:


>I then took away my binoculars just in time to see (perhaps) Soyuz
>trailing it by some 8 deg at a steady magnitude 0-1 & same color! They
>faded at about the same position as Endeavour.

Based on what I saw this evening, I believe you saw the Progress M-37 
trailing about 8 seconds behind Mir and not Soyuz TM-27. It supposedly 
was about 25 minutes behind Mir but the clouds closed in to prevent my 
observation. That was the brightest Progress I've seen, about mag 2.

>Great fun.

Yes!

>Trivia question: why is this Shuttle called Endeavour and not the US
>spelling Endeavor?

This shuttle was named after the first ship captained by James Cook, 
"British" explorer, navigator and astronomer.  

See http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/endeavour.html
for details.

Jeff Hunt <jhunt@radix.net>
(homepage) http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/8703