Many years ago I myself also had a great surprise of seeing an unexpected object suddenly appearing in my telescopic field of view. I had launched two hydrogen filled balloons, tied together, with a note attached, hoping to get a response from somebody far away. As I recall, the time was about an hour 'before' sunset and the balloon was drifting south of my location. After tracking it for some time through my telescope, it was getting quite small, even as seen using 50 times magnification. Then, all of a sudden, a white circular object appeared to slowly move into my field of view. [Actually, I was doing the moving because I was tracking the balloons.] I at first thought, UFO!! Scarred me half to death! Then, I realized that what I was looking at my balloons passing very close to Jupiter, yet the sky was still blue! The diameter of the balloons appeared so small that together, they weren't much bigger than the planet and they nearly transited it. I have since thought to myself, what are the odds of my balloons passing so close to any planet, let alone seeing the planet in full daylight? I have seen Venus in the daytime but at that time I didn't know that Jupiter was so bright. Since then, I have kept track of Jupiter, without optical aid, for a good half hour past sunrise. Best regards, Tom Wagner Iowa USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Nov 12 2000 - 11:31:42 PST