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Old July 11th 07, 12:34 PM posted to sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe
galwacco
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Posts: 22
Default I saw something!

On Jul 10, 3:36 pm, (DougD) wrote:
In article . com, galwacco wrote:



I downloaded this software called orbitron, which is supposed to give
me the exact time a determinate satelite is passing over where I am
situated, would you have any other software like that to indicate me?
Or, is that one I downloaded a good one?


So far I didn't have an opportunity to see anything, since it's rain
season and the sky is most of the nights covered up with clouds.


Thanks a lot folks!


You're very welcome! I'm not familiar with orbitron, I just use the
Heaven's Above website:http://www.heavens-above.com/
It's free, you just need to register and also find your earth coord.
to get the predictions. They do have look up tables on the site, but
the best results are if you can get a GPS and do a reading from your
location (altitude also figures into this as well). A fairly good way to
get this is using Google Earth. You can get your lat, lon, and altitude
from just zooming in on your location and then cutting and pasting from
the software.
I also use Starry Night Pro, which is kinda pricey astro software,
mine is kinda an older version, and I think there are less expensive versions
than the Pro. It's great software if you own a telescope, and it has tons of
features that make life a lot easier if you're trying to spot sat's. I use the
"find" function, and just type in "Iridium" as a search term and it will list
all of the sats, and highlight the ones that will be observable from your
location. You can then tag which ever ones that match up with the
Heaven's Above predictions, and it will draw in the sat. path across
the sky for your location and track it's motion in real time, or you can
fast forward, etc. to get a preview of where to be looking, etc. It also
gives out magnitude (brightness) data in real time, but it doesn't track
with Heaven's Above, HA's has always been more accurate as far as
predictions of magnitude. I usually go into HA about every two weeks
and grab a couple of weeks Iridium predictions for my location. I cut
and paste them into a desktop file, and then I go through and cut out
anything that is less then -4 in magnitude, it ends up looking something
like this:

date Time Mag Alt. Azimuth Dist. to Flare Mag2 Sat.
10 Jul 04:48:18 -4 12° 67° (ENE) 48.1 km (W) -5 Iridium 55

So this is the base HA prediction's that you get. There's the date, the
time in your location that it's rising above the horizon. The altitude where
it will flare, the azimuth, or basically the compass heading of it's origin.
The distance to flare is kinda important, it tells you how far away from
the absolute center of the reflected light you are. The mag2 is the
absolute brightest mag. that the sat. will reflect, the first mag. is the
reduced mag. due to your observing spot being not directly under
the spot of reflection. So, you might see a mag2 of -8, but the mag for
your location may only be -4 because you're 80km away from the
point on earth where the most light is bounced back from the sattelite.
There's a much better explanation of all this on the HA web site, plus
they track more than just the Iridiums, they also track the Int. Space
Station, as well as the Space Shuttle when it's up, next one I think is
going up the first week or so of August. They're fun to look at as well,
when the two are docked together, with even binoculars, you can make
out two seperate objects going across the sky together. There are also
some real oddbal sats, I've seen one which was actually a group of 3
satellites that I believe were tethered together, ( I think), but if really
spooked me the first time I saw this triangle of lights moving together
across the sky, I thought I had seen my first UFO!!
Anyway, sign up for HA, it's worth it if you really want to track satellites,
and it's free!
Good luck, great viewing!!

d.


WOW Doug!! What a lesson!
I've done what you told me! Printed a whole bunch of flares, like I
said the weather is pretty bad in here, but it seems that it will
clean up for the weekend.
I can't wait to do some spottings! Hey! I think I've been beaten by
the bug!!