Introduction

John Corby (john.corby@ambassador.com)
Tue, 11 Jul 1995 02:26:00 GMT

The return message from my subscription request asked me to send a 
personal introduction to the list.

I am a 43 year old telecommunications technoid living and working in the 
Toronto area of Canada. My observing station (with accompanying living 
quarters, known to the rest of my family as "home") is located at the 
top of the Niagara escarpment at longitude 80.00 W, latitude 43.89 N, 
and elevation 487 metres. This location is in the Town of Caledon, North 
West of Toronto. I am sufficiently far outside of Metropolitan Toronto 
that light pollution from the city is reduced to a glow on the southern 
horizon. Within 1 kilometre is a disused airport with dark skies and a 
clear view of the horizon in every direction.

I have been observing satellites seriously for about a year (and 
casually for many years). My particular interest is Mir, for several 
reasons. I have logged Mir observations for several months and I am 
particularly pleased with two of my log entries. I saw Discovery and Mir 
in close proximity at 5:30 am on February 8th during mission STS-63. I 
also saw Mir and Spektr at 3:50 am on May 31st this year.

I keep track of visiting Progress supply ships and Soyuz crew ships but 
have been unlucky in seeing any of them so far.

Unfortunately I was meteorologically-challenged during favourable passes 
of STS-71. I envy all those who reported successful sightings of that 
mission.

I prefer naked eye observing, but have a pair of tripod mounted 16x50 
binoculars available for difficult passes.

I use a Tandy 386/387 laptop running David Ransom's STSOrbit Plus 
(v9445) and T.S. Kelso's Trakstar (v2.15) for pass predictions. I obtain 
my element sets from T.S.Kelso's postings to the sci.space.news 
newsgroup and from the shuttle elements mailing list.

I have been trying to recruit an observing group in this area. If you 
live in the Toronto area please contact me. My E-mail address is 
john.corby@ambassador.com.

Thank you for Seesat-l. I have learned a lot from it and read it with 
enthusiasm. John Corby.
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