Looking into it a bit, MAP may be an interesting way to study the opposition/hotspot effect as it relates to at least some satellites. http://cloud.ucsd.edu/missions/triana/517.html says that the opposition effect starts to show up at ~ 10 deg backscatter angle: "The enhanced radiances fall within an observation cone of about 10o around the Earth-Sun line." And the Google-cached version of map.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/orbit.html says "Once in orbit about L2, the satellite [MAP] maintains a Lissajous orbit such that the MAP-Earth vector remains between 1 and 10 degrees off the Sun-Earth vector to satisfy communications requirements while avoiding eclipses." So it looks as if MAP will be cruising within the necessary angular range to probe the opposition effect. The specularly-reflecting solar panels might be a problem or a benefit, TBD. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 07 2001 - 14:43:09 PDT