I don't know what the chances are for Discovery to make an on-time liftoff on 4-JUL-06 so I guess I'm wasting my time again. But if the miracle happens there would be a chance for some people in France and Switzerland to observe a sun transit of the shuttle with the external tank. (In fact should there any body out in Lizard, Cornwall at 18:56:44 UT or on Jersey Island at 18:57:03 UT you might be successful at well.) Here are the location for the center line of that transit which I find with the latest NASA MECO state vector. JUL 4 18:57:00 -2.71975 49.50873 JUL 4 18:57:05 -1.90130 49.33974 JUL 4 18:57:10 -1.05867 49.15596 JUL 4 18:57:15 -0.18700 48.95505 JUL 4 18:57:20 0.72026 48.73390 JUL 4 18:57:25 1.67222 48.48816 JUL 4 18:57:30 2.68212 48.21152 JUL 4 18:57:35 3.77044 47.89426 JUL 4 18:57:40 4.97148 47.52000 JUL 4 18:57:45 6.34839 47.05826 JUL 4 18:57:50 7.99291 46.46039 You would have to be within about 3 km of this line to see anything and the duration of the transit is about 3 sec (this varies along the line - the further East the larger the tolerances and the lower the sun). The movement across the sun's disk is roughly along a 7 to 1 o'clock direction. In the (probably likely) event of further launch scrubs more such opportunities would exist during the remainder of the launch window (at somewhat different places of course). Has anybody ever observed a shuttle / ET solar transit? Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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