The first CCD image of the XMM-Newton satellite was taken by John Garradd in Australia in January of this year, followed by the first picture from the northern hemisphere by Stefano Sposetti in April. Now it has been spotted for the first time visually. French amateur astronomer Gerard FAURE caught it in his C8 telescope at 80x and 160x magnification during the night of 9 June from his observing site at 1170 m altitude located some 25 km southwest of Grenoble, France. The ephemeris was provided by Alphonse POUPLIER and myself. For reasons of electrical conductivity the outermost layer of the thermal superinsulation of XMM is made of carbon-loaded kapton. The satellite body is therefore quite black. Gerard saw XMM twice, at about 8300 km and 9100 km distance. The average brightness was +8.8. XMM is currently in an orbit of 13 012 km perigee, 120 862 km apogee, inclination 36.1 degrees, eccentricity 0.806. Its period is nearly 48 hours (2 sidereal days). Bruno Tilgner Saint-Cloud, France bruno_tilgner@compuserve.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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