Hello, Below you will find a story about the first possibile satellite observation of an American ever of Sputnik 1. I have a strong feeling that Dexter Stegemeyer in reality had witnessed Sputnik 1's rocket. I am sure that others on this list have seen Sputnik 1 and its rocket. What do they think of this story ? Greetings, Tristan Sorry for the long quoting(for once) >HE SITE OF Dexter Stegemeyer's old outhouse is not going to attract tour buses. > >But a new outhouse built on the spot where Stegemeyer's used to be now contains a proper plaque designating it as a historic site. Fairbanks scientists Neil Davis and Neal Brown visited the landmark off Miller Hill Road and installed the plaque in mid-October. > >Early on the morning of Oct. 6, 1957, Stegemeyer was in his outhouse and all was well with the world. The door was open. As he looked up in the sky, he witnessed the dawn of a new age. > >"Mr. Stegemeyer said he was just sitting there enjoying the beauty of the stars twinkling in the sky when he saw a strange moving star come up out of the west," Davis wrote about his neighbor who lived west of the University of Alaska. "From its speed and uniform passage across the sky, he knew it could not be an airplane, a meteor or any other familiar phenomena." > >What Stegemeyer saw that morning was the Sputnik I satellite as it orbited the Earth. The launch of Sputnik signaled the start of the Space Age and energized the United States during the Cold War in a way that no domestic technological feat could have matched. > >That same morning, scientists at the Geophysical Institute spotted Sputnik and for 20 years they were credited with being the first people in the Western Hemisphere to see a man-made satellite. > >But, Davis says of Stegemeyer, "His was the first sighting since he did see Sputnik lower in the western sky than did those at the Geophysical Institute." > >Stegemeyer's story of possibly being the first American to see the 184-pound orbiter is even included in the new book by Paul Dickson, "Sputnik: The Shock of the Century." > >The satellite, 22 inches in diameter, beeped its way around the world for most of that month and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and burned up in early 1958. > >Since the outhouse story was not publicized until Davis wrote it for the Alaska Science Forum in 1977, three people connected with the Geophysical Institute were credited in the News-Miner with being the first to see Sputnik--graduate students Bob Leonard, Joe Pope and Professor Dr. Gian Carlo Rumi. > >They were at Ballaine Lake, where the institute had some radio astronomy equipment, and they picked up the signal and observed the satellite moving across the sky. > >In a talk he gave last week at the UA Museum on satellites and space technology in Fairbanks, Neal Brown said that the Geophysical Institute played a key role in the early tracking of Sputnik. > >Brown credited the late Bob Merritt, an electrical engineer at the university, for developing a system that allowed the Geophysical Institute to provide the first monitoring of Sputnik in the Western world. > >Merritt's widow, Doreen, and one of her grandchildren attended Brown's talk, which was dedicated to Merritt, a man who did much to develop modern electronic communications in Alaska. > >In 1957, Merritt was working on a project involving radio astronomy, and when the news reached Fairbanks about Sputnik at about 5 p.m. he went to work quickly to modify the equipment and string antennas in the trees near Ballaine Lake. > >"Bob Merritt was so creative he pulled it together all at once," said Brown. "Within 24 hours they had made very accurate measurements of where Sputnik was in the sky." > >He kept improving the reception over the next three days and taped the satellite's beeping, the recording of which was played for university personnel and later for students at Lathrop High School. > >Brown said Merritt was a genius with electronics, but he didn't care much for writing things down so his role in the Sputnik monitoring had to be pieced together later. > >The scientists here faced some difficulty in getting the rest of the world to realize their analysis was credible. "People on the East Coast didn't even know there was a university up here," said Brown. > >"It was 11 days later before they finally got the station in Lima, Peru, geared up enough to nail down the position of Sputnik," said Brown, which confirmed the earlier measurements taken in Fairbanks. > >The satellite had been launched in northern Russia at almost the same latitude of Fairbanks and its course took it almost directly over Ballaine Lake several times a day. The satellite was visible in the reflected sunlight for a few minutes each time it passed overhead when the sky was clear. > >Brown said he wants to track down others who helped Merritt and have Sputnik stories to share. He can be reached at 479-2773. > Tristan Cools tristan.cools@skynet.be Belgian Working Group Satellites(BWGS) webmaster Ryckevelde: 3.2856E/51.2045N - OBS place 2 Brugge: 3.2166E/51.2104N - OBS place 3(home) Homepage at http://users.skynet.be/satimage/index.htm BWGS homepage at http://users.skynet.be/satimage/bwgs/bwgs.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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