Folks,
A very well-derverved CONGRATS to Rob Matson and SKYMAP! I
received a note from Rob earlier this week about a predicted lunar
transit by one of the Cosmos rocket bodies for Thursday morning
(04:46:13). As a reminder to all, we now have a third quarter moon and
the glare is quite strong.
Well, Rob's program was accurate down to the last second and the
trajectory predicted by SKYMAP was also dead on. A double success by
SKYMAP. The program had predicted a magnitude of +4.8 and this was also
certainly reasonable.
I first acquired the r/b about 20 degrees to the southeast of the
moon visually and it was immediately obvious that this thing was headed
for a lunar transit. So much so that I immediately grabbed my binoculars
and forget to get back to the telescope I had setup. SKYMAP predicted a
pass from the dark to the illuminated portions and this was indeed the
case. I think (?) I was also able to follow the rocket body within the
lunar glare after its passage across the lunar surface.
This opens up a new approach to capturing lunar transits and
something that I will follow up immediately. So far I have been pursuing
satellites which are not illuminated so as to capture their silhouette
against the brighter lunar surface. I will now concentrate on the
reverse (such as tonight's illuminated pass) to get some first-hand
experience regarding various aspects relating to photography. One of the
first things that comes to mind is shooting a roll of 24-exp film using
a power winder (at 7 fps) so as to generate an animated GIF.
Anthony.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 13 2001 - 19:18:24 PDT