Art Glick posted: >I was interested in seeing parts of the recent Atlas 5 that was >launched. It had an awfully large fairing around the upper stage. I Typically such fairings are discarded on the way up after the atmosphere gets thin enough. It's a waste of good payload capability to put them in orbit. The Japanese double payload launches are an exception. The two fairings around the second payload are released after orbit is achieved. >I saw two items listed here (27852 & 27853), but alas, no passes at my >location. Quicksat cannot be used for these objects due to the particular algorithm that it uses to find the culmination point for each pass. I have a different program called HighFly that uses an entirely different algorithm for generating predictions for such high objects. A typical prediction looks like this: *** 2003 Jly 28/29 Mon evening/Tue morning *** Times are CDT *** 27853 CENTAUR R/B M 2.5 ELDY 11 M2 -2 U MAG HGT ALT AZI HRS MIN R A DEC RANGE 94 9.4 6371 36 258 9 45 13 3.2 8.9 7496 99 9.3 6928 41 255 9 50 13 31.8 9.5 7864 103 9.2 7480 46 251 9 55 13 57.3 9.8 8270 107 9.2 8026 49 248 10 0 14 20.0 10.0 8702 Some of the Centaurs tumble rapidly and some don't. I have not looked for this one yet. The payload should maneuver to geosync orbit. On the other subject, Ed and I watched the ISS "skim" the Earth's shadow on Friday evening. At the culmination point with an altitude of 60 degrees in our southeast, it was about -3 magnitude. I tracked it for over 3 minutes after that in my 8 inch telescope. When I lost it, it was about magnitude 8 or 9 about 12 degrees up in my northeast. The range was about 800 miles. The seesat program says it was about 0.5 degrees inside the Earth's shadow. That is a "geometric" computation which ignores refraction. Mike McCants Austin, TX ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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