A friend of mine passed this question along to me; I thought it might be of some interested to those here on SeeSat-L. -- joe rao ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- The ISS is making a pass over the Baltimore-DC area Monday morning which, for some lucky constestants, should pass right in front of the Saturn's disk. Using Starry Night Pro 6, I'm coming up with an angular separation of about 33 minutes of arc for my backyard, with the ISS passing below Saturn. Using a local club observing site for the Howard [County] Astronomical League, Alpha Ridge park, some 21 miles ENE of me, the ISS passes 31 minutes of arc above Saturn. Presumably, somewhere in between, the ISS should pass directly in front of Saturn. Two issues. First, I have no idea how accurate SNP6's satellite paths are. Two, I have no idea whether NASA will change the orbit of the ISS at all between now and then. I'm using the following TLE, which I got from the NASA ISS Realtime Data page at http://tinyurl.com/ccyyo, which, as best I can figure it, is the TLE that will be in effect at the time of Monday morning's ISS pass: Coasting Arc #4 (Orbit 3304) ISS 1 25544U 98067A 07309.38200548 .00020000 00000-0 20000-3 0 9031 2 25544 51.6361 95.8540 0002767 177.9475 182.1701 15.75896742 33052 Should I send this to David Dunham (IOTA) to see if he can come up with a centerline? ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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