SeeSaters, My boy and I just watched GRACE-1 and GRACE-2 pass Polaris and the pointer stars in the "Big Dipper". I had my 5 inch Celestron set up using a 40mm eyepiece. A few seconds before the time that Grace-1 was supposed to cross very close to Polaris, my son, who was using 7 x 35 mm binoculars hollered, "There it is!" "It's getting close to the north star and..........there it goes." With much anticipation I was watching through the telescope. At the moment that Grace-1 was to pass, it did. Nice, nice, nice! <Please forgive my lack of technical lingo. :~) Clear as a bell it was. <Now I'm beginning to sound like Yoda. It had the common reddish glow and was, as far as I could tell, at least a magnitude brighter than Polaris. A short time later Grace-2 appeared in our area of attention, crossing by Polaris as well. My son said he could see Grace-1 without the binocs. Soon after passing Polaris, each satellite dimmed substantially before fading into the earth's shadow. They faded considerably long before reaching the shadow of the earth however. Clear skies and bright satellites, Tom W. NE Iowa USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Thu Apr 25 2002 - 23:32:19 EDT