> how many satellites the average person can see from a mag 4 sky A couple of months ago in six successive nights, from mid-city, without magnification I was able to see 41 different satellites. I put a little report about it online: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/41seen.htm Comments on a couple of the other replies: I wonder if Ted's limitation of one magnitude difference between apogee and perigee might be a little too stringent. I think that 00694 (63-047A, Atlas Centaur 2) -- a bright, lowish-inclination object -- may vary by more than one magnitude between perigee and apogee, but *from here* it's very easy to see fairly often. I emphasized *from here* above because I also want to agree very much what Björn wrote about latitude. There used to be an article titled "Latitude is Everything" on the Sky & Telescope Web site. It could be reasonably applied to satellites. Earlier this evening (cloudy unfortunately) south Texas had a pass of the Genesis Rk (01-034B, 26885, a Delta at an inclination 26.8 degrees) at less than 192 km (120 miles) above the ground. There are a fair number of objects like that at low inclinations, and for us who have the opportunity to see them, their perigee passes can be very fast and very bright (and quite a few tumbling as well)! I'm still hoping to see one at 120 km (75 miles). My .02 Euro... Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/satellite.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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/sat/seesat/seesatindex.html
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