At 09:57 30/09/02, Bob King wrote: Hello all, After seeing Tony Beresford's link to the Project Pluto page listing an ephemeris for J002E3 I scrolled down to see that the object will become as bright as mag. 15.3 in early October. I'd like to be able to obtain an elset for it in hopes of creating a map I can use at my 15" telescope. Is there one available? And what satellite program can handle plotting something that faint? Thank you very much for any and all your help. Bob, Bill Gray has an elset in TLE format of it on the site you referred to. However I would suggest you calculate an ephemeris for your location using the HORIZONS system at JPL. ( http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.html ) This is mainly because the orbit model used in satellite tracking applications is entirely inappropiate for this object. The numerical integration technique used by the HORIZONS system is much more accurate in the situation . You can also get to the calculation of an ephemris via the page about J002E3 thats n the NEO site at JPL ( http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov ) I would question whether 15 inches is enough aperture to see mag 15 easily. All the observations have been done with small telescopes , but they are all CCD imaging. After getting your ephemeris I would suggest plotting on charts made using something like Guide or Skymap Pro charting /planetarium programs rather than a satellite tracking program. Guide plots satellites but Bill Gray put a lower limit of .05 revs/day on mean motion, so it will center on the location but not show the object according to Bill Gray. Tony Beresford ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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