Hi all, Superbird's peak time is currently shifting about 90 seconds later night-to-night for southern locations (SoCal, Texas, Florida), 75 seconds for midlatitude states, and as little as 60 seconds for northern-most states (Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota). In the U.S., only Alaska, Washington State, Oregon, Hawaii, and northern-most Idaho cannot see Superbird A's flashes at the present time (due to twilight). If you haven't ever seen it, give it a try soon -- you're running out of time for this series of passes. For Bjoern, and others interested, my current calculated spin axis is RA 18.7926 hours, Dec -2.114 deg, cone-angle 89.826 deg as of 26 April @ 3 UT. To first-order, the axis is precessing in right ascension only, at a rate of .0419 deg/day (or ~15.3 deg/year). This is slightly less than the 3-year average precession rate of 15.9 degrees, which may be a consequence of the faster rotation rate of the satellite (faster rotation = slower precession). Combining the precession rate with the April 26 axis, the computed axis for 0:00 UT May 3 is RA 18.8118 hours, and Dec unchanged at -2.114 deg. Best, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 02 2000 - 14:13:05 PDT