Hi John & Arnold, Here's the one I'm waiting for- finally for a chance to bag my first transit video with my (relatively) new Unibrain Fire-i webcam! http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/firewire-webcam.html The 5 month-old Dell mini-tower shown on that page is what I'm now using to generate my transit reports (it runs at 2.8 GHz, actually). Since I still continue to fiddle with the program code, I run WorldView (in "search mode," for report generation) from within my Borland JBuilder X (i.e., version 10) development environment, which recommends 768 MB of RAM! Since the Dell came with "only" 512 MB, I just ordered another 512 MB for it. Hopefully, that'll speed things up (a lot), since at present the 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 gets thru the reports in only about 2/3 the time (~72 minutes) as my 3 year-old 1 GHz / 512 MB Pentium 3 w/JBuilder 8. I hope switching (soon) to GTOPO30 will speed things up even more, since currently I have to adjust predictions according to each subscriber's stated elevation above sea-level. I did get GTOPO30 implemented for the ISS/Venus transit tracks, but there's a little more to do to incorporate it into the subscriber reports: These results are based upon a TLE posted Monday, June 7 by NASA's Mission Control Center 1 25544U 98067A 04159.51929753 .00020000 00000-0 20000-3 0 9009 2 25544 51.6330 15.0298 0005537 207.1571 152.9300 15.68796178 36803 A - time on June 8 (Universal Coordinated Time / UTC) B - elevation angle of Venus and the ISS at the transit time C - azimuth angle of Venus ( + is East from North; - is W from N) D - distance to the ISS (km; km / 1.609 = mi) E - latitude for observing the transit F - longitude G - elevation above sea-level (meters) A------- B--- C----- D--- E------- F-------- G--- 5:30:12 60.7 116.1 419 39.4951 69.0556 4012 > highest; Tajikistan 5:31:23 62.4 128.0 414 42.4489 73.9579 3867 > highest near Contact 2; Kyrgyzstan 6:58:08 51.1 88.6 464 28.8024 32.4188 1322 6:58:09 51.1 88.7 464 28.8526 32.4684 1033 6:58:10 51.2 88.8 464 28.9027 32.5168 577 6:58:11 51.2 88.8 463 28.9529 32.5664 275 6:58:12 51.3 88.9 463 29.0030 32.6166 32 6:58:13 51.3 89.0 463 29.0531 32.6686 H2O 6:58:14 51.4 89.1 462 29.1032 32.7209 H2O 6:58:15 51.4 89.2 462 29.1533 32.7732 H2O > Red Sea 6:58:16 51.5 89.3 462 29.2034 32.8256 H2O 6:58:17 51.5 89.4 462 29.2534 32.8780 H2O 6:58:18 51.6 89.5 461 29.3034 32.9313 95 6:58:19 51.6 89.6 461 29.3534 32.9855 298 6:58:20 51.7 89.6 461 29.4034 33.0390 420 6:58:21 51.7 89.7 460 29.4533 33.0901 241 6:58:22 51.8 89.8 460 29.5032 33.1476 829 6:59:00 53.6 93.5 450 31.3810 35.1810 576 6:59:01 53.6 93.6 450 31.4300 35.2346 465 6:59:02 53.7 93.7 450 31.4789 35.2885 365 6:59:03 53.7 93.8 450 31.5278 35.3434 399 6:59:04 53.8 93.9 449 31.5769 35.3925 -321 6:59:05 53.8 94.0 449 31.6258 35.4466 -405 6:59:06 53.9 94.1 449 31.6746 35.5014 -405 > lowest; The Dead Sea 6:59:07 53.9 94.2 449 31.7233 35.5562 -405 6:59:08 54.0 94.3 448 31.7720 35.6118 -318 6:59:09 54.0 94.4 448 31.8207 35.6678 -181 6:59:10 54.1 94.5 448 31.8691 35.7259 219 6:59:11 54.1 94.6 448 31.9175 35.7843 669 6:59:12 54.1 94.7 447 31.9660 35.8417 964 6:59:13 54.2 94.8 447 32.0145 35.8975 1051 I'm not yet sure if those numbers really represent elevations above sea-level (there's a good bit of the GTOPO30 documentation that I haven't read), but they are in close agreement with the values I've checked at selected locations using CalSKY. I'm really treating them as heights above the WGS72 ellipsoid, so another TODO is to switch to WGS84 constants; but first I have to determine if there are any non-obvious interactions in doing so, with SGP4 for example, and what may be required to steer around any such interactions. The weather here has been dreadful lately, with thunderstorms predicted virtually every day, that nonetheless hardly ever leave a drop of much-needed rain! So, I'm not exactly planning my day around transit observing, the afternoon of June 17.... I haven't heard a thing about anybody catching a simultaneous ISS / Venus transit- very discouraging, after all the work and advance promotion. I was really hoping Michael Gill would get it, during his trip to Greece, but I've yet to hear from him. Tom Need to change my report back to miles... A - travel distance (kilometers) and direction B - date C - time D - elevation angle of the ISS E - azimuth angle of the ISS ( + is East from North; - is W from N) F - range (kilometers) G - latitude for observing the transit H - longitude I - how far (kilometers) can I be from the centerline? For other than solar transits: J - lunar transits: is space station sunlit? planetary encounters: 1=Mercury; 2=Venus; 4=Mars; 5=Jupiter; 6=Saturn K - sun elevation angle L - sun/moon or sun/planet separation angle A------- B----- C----- D--- E----- F--- G------- H-------- I---- J K---- L---- 10.9 W 17 Jun 150906 65.4 -110.7 399 34.8855 -81.9989 1.9 9.7 SW 06.68 34.8537 -81.9590 1.9 10.0 SW 17 Jun 150907 65.4 -110.6 399 34.8390 -81.9405 1.9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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