Re: Earth rotation rate

From: Jonathan T Wojack (tlj18@juno.com)
Date: Wed Apr 03 2002 - 20:34:29 EST

  • Next message: Daniel Deak: "Disco balls TLE, Apr. 03"

    Hello,
    
    I want to thank the many people who sent me e-mails, helping me to
    understand the relationship between a geosat's orbital period, and the
    length of a sidereal day.  I see it now.  For some reason, I thought that
    the Sun's position was "fixed," and the stars were moving (4 minutes per
    day).  I obviously had it backwards (and what I thought made absolutely
    no scientific sense!).
    
    A have another question, though:
    
    Stars appear to "travel" from East to West from night to night. 
    Satellites with inclinations of 90.000 degrees and less (there's a term
    for this, it's the opposite of "retrograde," but at the moment I can't
    remember it....) travel from West to East.  Am I correct in thinking that
    this does not matter, that the only important detail is the orbital
    period?
    
    ------------------------------
    Jonathan T. Wojack                 tlj18@juno.com
    39.706d N   75.683d W            5 hours behind UT (-5)         
    ***DOZENS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, ASTRONOMY, 
    SKY AND TELESCOPE, AD ASTRA MAGAZINES ARE FOR SALE***
    
    
    ________________________________________________________________
    GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
    Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
    Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
    http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    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
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 20:38:48 EST