Considering the NEAR glint experiment on the night of Jan 22/23: There are four solar panels on the spacecraft, each with its own independent deployment mechanism, and all nominally deployed with their normals in same direction. If one considers independent errors in the final deployed positions of each, then there would actually be four spots cast on the earth, each in slightly different location, but hopefully still somewhat overlapping. The animation assumes the spots are all perfectly overlapping. So the actual spot size could be somewhat (up to 4 times) larger than shown, and irregular in shape, however any spreading would of course decrease the observed magnitude. If your ground location is close to, but not inside one of the areas shown on the animation, DO NOT GIVE UP HOPE. There is a great chance the spot will be larger than shown. An additional error would be the misalignment of the mechanical coordinate system with the guidance coordinate system defined by the onboard star camera. These were nominally aligned with great precision on the ground, however the stress of launch, the gravity free environment, and especially the thermal gradients across the spacecraft (the solar panels are on the hot side, the star camera is on the cold side) could have caused a deviation in the star camera pointing. This would cause a single constant bias in the location of all the spots cast on the ground. -- Gene A. Heyler Ph: 410-792-6000 x 8664 JHU/APL Fax: 410-792-6670 Bldg 4 Rm 140 Email: glh@retro.jhuapl.edu Laurel, MD 20723-6099