Peter G wrote: > ...The color also seemed to shift from basically > white (in scorpius) to light orange (after passing > ophiuchus) Is this common behavior for Lacrosse 5? What > accounts for it? Lacrosse 5 (05016A / 28646) typically is colourless, unlike its predecessors, which have a pronounced yellow-orange colour. This colouration is due to gold coloured thermal blanket covering a large fraction of their surface. Most likely, Lacrosse 5 employs significantly less of this material than the earlier spacecraft. My guess is that the change in colour that you observed was due to a variation in the amount of gold thermal blanket reflecting light in your direction as it passed. By the way, the reddest satellite I have observed is ERBS (Earth Radiation Budget Satellite) 84108B / 15354. This photo of its deployment from shuttle Challenger reveals that it was almost completely swathed in gold coloured thermal blanket: satobs@satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/ERBS_deployment.jpg">http://satobs@satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/ERBS_deployment.jpg Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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