Usenet has announced creation of sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe following a successful campaign led by SeeSat-L subscriber Jim Varney. Jim's proponents were SeeSat-L's maintainer, Bart De Pontieu and SeeSat-L subscribers, Jay Respler and Jeff Hunt . Winning by a required large margin, Usenet implemented the news service on March 17, 1998, the 40th anniversary date of the launching of Vanguard 1 into orbit.
One may have to make a request to their service provider that
sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe be included on their news service if
they want to subscribe to it. It is also available on Usenet providers
Mailgate
;
News2Web
and
Google-Groups
via the WWW.
Additional web-based providers are found
here .
Listed below is the announcement and charter for sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe.
Congratulations to Jim Varney and "thanks" to those who voted for the creation
of the news group!
sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 250:20 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 12 Mar 1998. For your newsgroups file: sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe Visually observing artificial satellite. The charter, culled from the vote result announcement: Sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe is an unmoderated forum for discussion and exchange of information about visual observing of artificial satellites. Possible topics include (list is not exhaustive): - reports of observations of artificial satellites (manned and unmanned) and space probes using naked eye, binoculars, telescopes, video, or photography - orbital elements of satellites of current interest (new satellites, satellites about to reenter the atmosphere, maneuvering satellites, etc) - announcements of planned and recent launches - visibility predictions for artificial satellites - predictions of the decay (atmospheric reentry) of artificial satellites - discussions about software related to predictions/analysis of visual observations of artificial satellites - instruments and techniques for visual observations of artificial satellites - results/reports of observational programs, such as the positional measurements program of the UK Optical Tracking Working Group; the flash period measurements program of the Belgian Working Group Satellites; the informal spy satellite tracking program - results of scientific studies using visual observations of artificial satellites The following types of articles are *not* part of the charter: - non-visual artificial satellite observing (i.e. radio) - articles which contain personal attacks of any sort, ad hominem arguments, etc. - blank messages, test messages, MAKE.MONEY.FAST, binaries, uuencoded messages - advertisements not related to artificial satellite observing. Discussions about technical aspects of payloads or rockets are acceptable, but only if they are branched off of an observation or are limited in scope, detail and length. Articles containing discussions of radio observations are not welcome, unless they are tied in with visual observations.