We have a pass only half an hour or so after a fly-round commences following separation, but as the sun will only just be below the horizon it does not look good. The following pass looks promising, but as Wunderground is predicting a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT chance of precipitation I think this will be yet another frustration of not seeing an interesting observation. . (I am assuming no change to the separation time as a result of the complications of working on the P6 truss.) Prospects are that we will be clouded out from now till then at least As the 5th will be a night on which it is customary to send up fireworks here, there might be lots of accidental observers and lots of UFO reports if by any chance the spacecraft are visible through the murky weather! Incidentally NASA is talking in terms of having to consider discarding the P6 truss if they can't repair it, it would make an interesting observation as debris I guess but it would also be a nasty piece of space junk at a 51 degree inclination, best wishes with the "surgery" to repair it! Assuming no changes the deorbit burn will occur at 1013 UTC on Wednesday, about half an hour before we would have been due to have a low pass here. I can't find the reference but read that in order to increase landing options the shuttle will use the track last used by Columbia. I would be interested in the ground track between deorbit burn and final approach, as generally NASA only shows the ground track approaching the USA. (Comet- what comet? Stars- what stars? Satellites - what satellites? guess I may see one again sometime!) Robert Robert Holdsworth Wainuiomata New Zealand 174.948E 41.261S ----- Original Message ----- From: <Skywayinc@aol.com> To: <gprichard@vtown.com.au>; <kfetter@yahoo.com>; <seesat-l@satobs.org> Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 2:57 AM Subject: Re: shuttle undocking time > In a message dated 10/31/2007 9:03:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > gprichard@vtown.com.au writes: > > > Unfortunately there are no observing opportunities from Australia > during the undocking/separation/landing period. The best of luck to > everybody else though...I look forward to reading your observations. > > > Well . . . latest weather forecasts suggests we'll be "skunked" with > cloudiness. All the > more aggravating since we are into a long stretch of beautifully clear > weather right now; likely > going away by later in the weekend. Oh well . . . at least I'm getting > some > great views of > Comet 17P/Holmes. > > -- joe rao > > > > > ************************************** See what's new at > http://www.aol.com > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: > http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html > > > __________ NOD32 2620 (20071027) Information __________ > > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. > http://www.eset.com > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 01 2007 - 17:12:59 UTC