From: "Dale Ireland" <direland@drdale.com> "In my experiences at 6 total eclipses I can't remember seeing any stars and only the brightest planets. probably nothing fainter than 0 or -1." The last time I saw the space station- which was longer after sunset than I'd have liked- it was headed in the direction of Jupiter, and was at least as bright as Jupiter before it went into the earth's shadow. On at least one occasion, I've seen it significantly brighter than that (under the right conditions, supposedly it can reach -4). "I have wondered if it might be possible to get a photograph of a geosynchronous satellite passing through the lunar umbra or penumbra when the shadow may not necessarily strike the earth but only pass close to the earth. A time exposure tracking on the stars would show the satellite as a streak that would dim and brighten again." There are a lot of candidates in geosynchronous orbit, of course: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html so probably you'd get quite a few streaks (and maybe pick up a GPS satellite too, if you were lucky). It's an interesting idea, but offhand, I'm not sure how common it is for the moon's shadow to fall within the circle of geosynchronous satellites. You'd need .1 radian or less of separation between the moon and the sun (geosynchronous orbit / moon distance), which may be close to the present separation, in fact: http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=103&vbody=3&month=3&day=3&cen tury=20&decade=0&year=3&hour=05&minute=0&fovmul=1&rfov=10&bfov=30&sorbs=1&br ite=1 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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