RE: Mir - very bright
jeff hunt (jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com)
Tue, 27 Feb 96 14:19:14 EST
John Corby recently posted in part....
>I emerged from seesat hibernation during the cruel Canadian winter
>to watch my first pass of Mir for 1996. I wanted to see how it
>looked with Soyuz docked.
Well now, that's what I call a fair weather friend ;-)
I too have not had a good overhead pass for quite a while because of
the weather. I had no trouble picking it up on a recent low
northerly pass on an evening not too long ago.
>Can anybody comment on which parts of Mir contribute to its
>reflectivity?
IMO, the large nearly similiar sized off-white modules that make up
the Mir complex probably contribute equally to it's overall
brightness. I don't believe the solar arrays contribute much to its
overall brighness. Occasionally, you might get a bright glint from
the panels as it approaches the horizon opposite the Sun. My
recollection of pictures of Mir are that there is little highly
reflective coatings on Mir and that the Soyuz and Progress vessels
are mainly black. Let's see how it looks after the Priroda module
gets there in mid-April (maybe).
You might want to check out a good reference on Mir;
http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~jgreen/fpspace.html
It also has links to NASA sites (which I can't recall right now)
that have info on Mir. Regards,
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Jeff Hunt, Charlotte Hall, Md. 38.51N, 76.76W
E-mail: jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com
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