A satellite is small, so for an occultation of 6 s, it must nearly match the speed of Earth rotation - 0.39 km/s at the observer latitude. This is for the eastward component - the N/S component must be near zero. If the satellite has a 12 m dish, the tolerance of these two velocities combined is 2 m/s, or 0.5%. Including the radial component it could theoretically be anything within +- 11 km/s or so, but it would have mainly a W/E component while the velocity is high. It needs a highly elliptic orbit with apogee at 175000 km to have 0.39 km/s there, even higher if was approaching/receding. These numbers together make the chance very slim, since very few satellites are that high/large, and the orbit would be severely disturbed by the Moon. > >I observed an occultation by a small asteroid (2005 AB) that lasted for >6 seconds ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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