> 8 seconds is too long for a low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite. Russ Pinizzotto recently observed a solar transit by the ISS at about 12 degrees elevation, which lasted about 3 seconds. Wim reports that the observation was made at 6:30 UTC in the Netherlands, meaning that it must have been not long after sunrise, and consequently at low elevation (and long range). The inclination of the ISS's orbit is 51.63 degrees, which puts the "top" of its orbit right at the latitude that Wim says the transit was observed. Supposing that it was the ISS then, a significant degree of its motion would have been in the line of sight, so it seems to me that in such a scenario, the space station might indeed take 8 seconds to transit the sun. In fact it wasn't the ISS however, which was about midway between Hawaii and Japan at the time, but I'm not so sure that a satellite can be ruled out... although few LEO satellites are of significant size, compared with the space station. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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