Hello Jonathan and others, I use a light binocular, not so powerfull, just 7x35; that is a magnification of 7 and a objective(forward lens) of 35 mm diameter. As it is hard to watch the sky standing, I use an adjustable gardenchair to sit in. When fully put down I can easily look straight up. When observing long passes I regularly switch over to the other hand to hold the bino. The stopwatch is on a cord around my neck hanging down. I'm quite familiar with it and can "feel" which button to push for starting and timing lap- times. I stop the time at a known time reading from a shortwave clock, synchro- nized every minute by radiowaves from a German Radio station near Frankfurt. In my gardenshed I've a laptopcomputer with the predictions on screen, and look for the next sat (about 350 are predicted each night) I can observe. The priority sats go first. The pass along the sky is checked on a starmap and a suitable point to wait for the sat is selected and the track noted. Then I go to my chair, adjust it to the proper direction and viewing position and wait for the sat scanning the vicinity of the waiting point through my bino's In this way I can observe a sat about every 5 minutes on everage. See my regualar postings of observations. Greetings and clear, dark skies Leo Barhorst 52.767 N 5.09 E 2 m ASL ----- Original Message ----- From: <tlj18@juno.com> To: <SeeSat-L@blackadder.lmsal.com> Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 1:16 AM Subject: Question about stopwatches. > Hello, > > My question: > > How do you people time flashes of satellites seen in binoculars? You > have a stopwatch in one hand, binoculars in the other hand.....? I would > think that almost any useful pair of binoculars would be too heavy to > hold with one hand, steady, for more than a few seconds. > > Could someone illuminate me? > > Jonathan Wojack > tlj18@juno.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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