>I just observed EGP in different night vision scopes and with different lenses. >Here are the results: I have yet another method of observing it. I use a VIXEN Skysensor 2000 PC with a TeleVue Pronto (70 mm objective diameter, 480 mm focal length). This is followed by a flip mirror to switch between an eyepiece and a VIXEN B05-3M CCD video camera. The output of the camera is fed into a SONY video walkman which has an LCD screen of reasonable size and records the video on a small digital cassette. The whole equipment is portable and operates on a small (12 Ah) 12-V battery. One advantage of the VIXEN Skysensor is that one can store TLEs for up to 30 satellites. I have written a Visual Basic program to transfer TLEs from a PC to the Skysensor in a matter of minutes. EGP is very easy to acquire because of its slow motion. Once I have it in the eyepiece I flip the mirror and the flashes are then recorded on tape. The VIXEN Skysensor takes care of the tracking, and if it is well aligned it requires very little manual correction just by looking at the flashes on the video screen. Because the PAL video standard allows a resolution of 1/25th second (with special equipment one could examine half-frames every 1/50th second) it would be possible to measure the flash frequencies which are fairly complex indeed. The tape is very instructive for people who have never seen EGP before and has inspired quite a few to look for it themselves. Bruno Tilgner 48.84N 2.2E ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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