Drawing of depletion burn
Daniel Deak (dan.deak@sympatico.ca)
Thu, 19 Aug 1999 00:22:51 -0400
Hello everyone,
As mentioned Tuesday morning, I uploaded a drawing of the
Delta II second stage depletion burn to my web site at :
http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.deak/dep_burn.jpg
Some details of my observation (times are UTC +/- 1sec) :
Started waiting for the rocket with 7x35 binocs at around 06:31
Acquisition of the rocket at 06:33:34
Observed for a few seconds then transfered to my 20x80 binocs.
Reacquisition at 06:33:51. At that time the burn was in progress or
already over (was to last 7 seconds). My drawing represents what
I saw at that time. Apparent size at 1x : 1 degree.
At 06:34:20, the cloud was over 3 degrees in size, still well visible.
At around 06:35:55, it was barely visible at 1x and was over 5 deg.
In conclusion, the cloud grew very fast during the first seconds of
the burn, the part that I missed... :-( and then grew slower as it became
fainter while remaining visible for just over 2 minutes. It followed the track
of the rocket at first but quickly slowed.
A good advice for anyone attempting to see that kind of burn in the
future, use small binoculars (7 to 10x). You have a wider field of view
and it's easy to see since it is a bright phenomenon (sun helping ?).
Note : In my drawing, direction of travel was toward the top of
the image.
Cheers !
Dan
--
Daniel Deak
St-Bonaventure, Québec
COSPAR site 1745 : 45.9483°N, 72.6539°W, 58 m., UTC-4:00
E-mail : dan.deak@sympatico.ca
French-language satellite web site : http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.deak/