This morning, "Kevin Fetter" <kfetter@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Subject: tips search > > This morning I did a seach for tips > > I saw something that seems to match the direction that tips would travel. It > was 9 - 10 minutes ahead of where tips was to pass based on it old orbit. So > either it was that early are I saw something else. All I saw was a point of > light, no tether. I was using my 10*50 binculars and so the tether could have > been to faint to see. > > So do a search at least 10 minutes ahead of time, in the fluke chance it was > tips I saw and it's passing by that early. > If one assumes that this morning (e.g. day 188.333), TiPS was 9.5 minutes ahead of the latest "real" TLE, viz. TiPS 1 23937U 96029F 03113.02889112 0.00001900 00000-0 17481-2 0 05 2 23937 63.4145 5.2674 0231000 0.3215 359.6785 13.71273610 04 what's the best way to derive search elements? A 9.5 minute difference corresponds to about 0.0905 revolutions, and over 75.304 days would represent an increase in the average mean motion of .001201353 rev/day. It seems to me that leaving everything along except for the TLE epoch might cause problems with the angular-positional elements. If one were to adjust the decay term (M2) leaving the epoch and initial mean motion unchanged, wouldn't the B* term also need adjustment? - and it's not obvious to me how to do that. If one changes ONLY the initial mean motion, one gets the TLE: TiPS -9.5min 1 33937U 96029F 03113.02889112 0.00001900 00000-0 17481-2 0 06 2 33937 63.4145 5.2674 0231000 0.3215 359.6785 13.71393745 07 This "adjusted" TLE would, for my location, produce a pass tomorrow morning culminating at 03:42.8 EDT (07:42.8 UTC) at alt/azim 47/242 compared to the "old real" TLE at 03:52.7 EDT (07:52.7 UTC) at 40/243. I'll try looking for that [those] pass[es] in the morning, but would welcome more reasoned suggestions from the skilled celestial mechanicians on this List. Clear and dark skies! Ed Light N 40.1075, W 074.2312, +24m ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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