Dr. Jin Zhu asked: > Can anyone give an estimate for the path of Cosmos 1? Is it > possible to watch it from Beijing, China within 1-2 hours > after its launching? Assuming launch on-time on 2005 Jun 21 at 19:46:09 UTC, and achieving exactly the planned orbit, Cosmos 1's first pass visible from Beijing will occur about 16h 45m after launch. It would culminate about 56 degree above the eastern horizon The solar sail will not have deployed yet, so the spacecraft would be faint - I estimate a brightest magnitude of 7.4 +/- 2 on the pass in question. The sun will be a bit more than 6 deg below the horizon, so the sky will not be very dark, making observation especially challenging. It might be visible in 7x50 binoculars, but 11x80 or 20x80 would greatly improve the probability of seeing it. The official estimated orbital elements are available on this Heavens-Above web page: http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.asp?lat=48.067&lng=11.267&alt=595&loc= Oberpfaffenhofen&TZ=CET&satid=67000 Elements derived from tracking are likely to become available well before Beijing's first visible pass. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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