I agree that manual tracking at least is quite easy. I have no problem intercepting 90% of objects with a 12.5" dob and then tracking even objects moving as fast as Lacrosse satellites although I admit there is considerable athleticism involved :-) . What a kick it is too! I had a little trouble with the tethered satellite TiPS at zenith, but no problem at all when it was closer to the horizon, and quite a sight it was! I use SatSpy fueled with Mike McCants' latest mccants.tle, eccen.tle, or geo.tle to find interesting passages. I then use Chris Marriott's SkyMap Pro 6 to find a more precise time and location that is easily found in the sky. I usually try to select a star I can find that is no more than a degree or two from the passage point. I usually get there a minute or so ahead. The FOV with a 32 mm TeleVue lens is about a degree. With the 12.5" I've had no problems tracking satellites with magnitudes down to 12 or 13. The Noss satellites usually don't fit into the 1 degree FOV all at once :-( . By the way, this is an excellent way to learn the stars. Regards, Wayne Hughes http://morgan.botany.uga.edu/wayne/astronomy.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 02 2000 - 10:03:23 PST