I have just witnessed the ISS passing close to Mars and the Moon consecutively. The pass would also have been a transit or near transit past Venus, but unfortunately that was impossible to observe because of hills obscuring the ISS and Venus at that point. The ISS was first observed at 0916 UTC (3 January) approximately due west at 30 degrees- according to predictions it should have been visible before this, but there was some cloud cover and I may also not have picked it up when it first visible. It passed by Mars at approximately 09:16:40 UTC and the Moon at 09:17:57, entering shadow at 09:18:24 around 20 degrees - predicted shadow entry was due North but I estimate it occurred a little east of North. Predicted magnitude was 0.6 but in my estimation it was a little brighter, and was still quite clearly visible close to a bright moon. Sorry about the lack of precision of this observation but I don't have the equipment to do better. Unfortunately no pictures as my veteran 35 mm cam died some time ago and I have not yet replaced it- probably with digital when finance permits! Robert Holdsworth Wainuiomata New Zealand 41.2610°S, 174.9470°E UTC plus 13 (NZ Daylight Time) ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 03 2004 - 04:57:16 EST