Hey Markus, I wonder where Rick was looking and when he saw the satellites. The vernal geosynchronous satellite (geosat) flare season began in late February and will run through to mid-April. For most of us on Earth it only really lasts a week or so to see *visible* flaring geosats if we don't move from our latitude. But for those in orbits inclined like the ISS/Shuttle - they would have the entire season *and* almost every night side of every rev! I've asked several people at NASA JSC (which used to be one of my accounts) to find out how to *task* the "underworked" folks on those vehicles :). But no luck. From the perspective of someone in orbit, you would suddenly see a line of geosats flare in the nightime side of the sky - perhaps sequentially - from east to west and then they would all disappear again. The declination of these objects would decrease slightly as you go through an ascending node pass and increase slightly in declination as you would go through a descending pass. And there would be two separate groups of flaring geosats - those west of the earth's shadow (the first set to be seen flaring) and then those east of the earth's shadow. And you could easily see what would appear to be 5 to 10 flaring geosats in the few minutes you have to see this effect from an orbiting spacecraft. In a lot of ways, it would be an ideal place to observe this cool phenomena. Regards, Jeff Umbarger Plano, TX USA --- Markus Mehring <m.m@gmx.net> wrote: > > Rick Linnehan reported seeing satellites during EVA > #3 - I must have > missed that, maybe the Flight Day Highlights replay > has it. > > As Bill Harwood (*) writes: > > >"I think I just maybe saw the Southern Cross... and > definitely a > >satellite fly over," Linnehan said at one point. > "Three satellites. > >Wow!" > > Wonder if that's "three satellites" as in "NOSS"... > > > (*) > http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked > Questions, SeeSat-L archive: > http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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