A 49 Year Old Rocket...

For maybe the last 5 years or so, it's been one of my goals to see the
Vanguard 1 Satellite. Flipping through my log, I can see seven or eight
times when I've run out to try to see either the satellite or it's
rocket. The difficulty for me is that both the satellite and it's
rocket are kind of dimmish, and to see them required pointing my scope
at exactly the right spot on a decent night and waiting for the object
to pass. Somehow, things never quite worked.
I'm not a big fan of watching hardware in Earth orbit... I've never
bothered to knowingly catch sight of the ISS or the Space Shuttle. I
remember well though, the excitement of the early years of the space
age, when orbiting a bottle cap would have been a major, thrilling,
scientific achievement. Vanguard 1 and it's launch rocket are now the
oldest man made objects in orbit, having been launched on March 17,
1958. I was 8 years old, and obsessed with the early satellites, as
were many others. I'm sure I never saw Vanguard 1 back then... way to
dim for naked eye viewing... but I remember reading about it in "Life"
"The Saturday Evening Post" and "The Weekly Reader."
Tonight, there were no visible predictions on the "Heavens Above"
site for the satellite, but the rocket is going through a series of
fairly bright passes. I printed off a chart last night for a 9th mag.
pass, but then I realized it was well before 10:00pm DST... it doesn't
get fully dark until 11:00 this time of year. Tonight though, a 9.5
mag. pass was predicted to pass just north of a 6th magnitude star in
Libra at 11:07:16pm DST. I went out at 10:30, and almost gave up.
There were high, thin clouds, and the Milky Way was invisible. Still
though, it's Summertime DST, and it wasn't fully dark. I watched the
fireworks display just over the trees on the hill to my East from the
direction of the nearby town of Templeton, IA, and decided to give it a
try. I set up my old C8, set my shortwave on a time signal, and got
things lined up. It was a bit discouraging at first... I had trouble
finding the 3rd mag. star to start my star hop to the 6th mag. star that
the rocket would come close to. Things fell into place though, and the
sky darkened considerably as the minutes beeped by on my shortwave
radio. I'd wondered how fast it would appear to move, and how dim it
would appear. A little mental geometry looking at the path on my
"Heavens Above" chart showed me that the rocket shouldn't zip by like a
meteor, even through my 25mm, 50x eyepiece, but should drift through the
FOV as a moving dot. How bright it would appear, I wasn't sure. 9.5 is
hardly dim for a point source, but this thing has been elusive for me,
and I didn't have a really dark sky. 11:05 beeped by on the radio and I
got aimed and looked into the eyepiece. I clicked my turret up from my
40mm eyepiece up to my 25mm to darken the sky a bit. I was going to be
hampered by light pollution... it was hard to keep my eye in place over
the darkness of the sky through the eyepiece when I could see the grass
I was standing on so clearly. 11:06 beeped by. I slowly followed the
star, keeping it on the bottom edge of the FOV... The rocket should
cross the field from left to right, (reversed in my SCT) as it went from
West to East in the sky. 11:07 beeped by... I counted the beeps
until11:07:16... BINGO!!! An easy dot drifted across, right where it
was supposed to! It took a little over a second, but I wasn't trying to
time it. Normally, I wouldn't think much of a telescopic satellite
crossing my FOV, but this was a 49 year old chunk of HISTORY!
After catching the Vanguard 1 Rocket, I shifted over for a quick
look at M4 in Scorpius. One of my favorite globular clusters, with it's
little "bar" of stars running north-south through it. It was nice, but
tonight wasn't a particularly clear night. ANYWAY, I was happy!
Next, I go for the satellite, and I know now I can DO it! But now,
I gotta go down in the basement and put my scope in it's box.
Tomorrow's a workin' day.
Marty