You are crossing the line

From: Mike McCants (mmccants@io.com)
Date: Tue Aug 10 2004 - 12:51:37 EDT

  • Next message: Brad Young: "Reasons For Observing (This Mailing List)"

    >Maybe you could go to Afghanistan
    
    You have a nice telescope Mr. Graham no name:
    
    http://members.optusnet.com.au/fostex/scope.JPG
    
    Why don't you contribute something to the hobby instead of
    deliberating antagonizing us?
    
    >Hey this is great,go you all thinkin!!
    
    Perhaps you have made us think about some things.  But are we thinking
    about the right things?
    
    Can we track 1000 objects visually?  2000?  More?  Do we want to try?
    
    The current system tracks over 100 objects with very high accuracy.
    Many of these objects are old, small, and faint.  Almost all of these
    objects have very low drag, especially now that the sun is heading
    towards a sunspot minimum.  Often elsets that are one or two months
    old are accurate to a few seconds and a few tenths of a degree.
    
    But tracking objects with high accuracy does take a lot of time and
    effort.  So now the question becomes:  Can we develop new methods
    of relatively lower accuracy that will allow us to maintain elsets
    on a large number of objects with a lot less effort?
    
    Even a "one degree" Alt/Az observation of an object with moderate
    drag could be very useful when the object has not been seen for
    a month.  In fact, even "I think it was only 10 seconds early"
    could be very useful on a higher drag object.
    
    And observers in the southern hemisphere could be especially valuable.
    
    There is an observer who has contributed several thousand "moderate
    accuracy" observations to the heavens-above web site.  The "whyregister"
    page says:
    
    ]Enter your own observations of satellites into our database.
    ]These observations can help the amateur satellite observer community to
    ]keep track of satellites for which orbital data is not available from NASA. 
    
    But I do not believe that these observations are being used for anything
    at present.
    
    Mike McCants
    
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