In a message dated 11/7/2007 2:34:41 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, Grungefreak@valornet.com writes: I see that a few Seesat subscribers made it on space.com. Congrats! http://www.space.com/spacewatch/071107-ns-shuttle-flyover.html Columbia was mentioned yet again, but at least there was no mention of the "7 dead astronauts"..."7 dead astronauts"..."7 dead astronauts". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- Columbia comments aside, I just want to thank all those SeeSat-L members who helped with the preparation of the aforementioned Space.com article. It was very well-received! Now . . . here is something for all of you to take note of regarding the next Shuttle launch (Atlantis/STS-122), that is tentatively scheduled for December 6 at 4:31 p.m. EST. This is going to be most interesting because that launch time is 4 minutes after local sunset in the New York metro area. Back on September 12, 1991, STS-48 was launched at 7:11 p.m., or just 1-minute after local sunset in N. Y. That was probably the best launch I've ever seen from the N. Y. area, because the Shuttle and its external tank was illuminated by sunlight. This made the Shuttle appear incredibly bright . . . from Levittown, Long Island (where I was living back then) I estimated the brightness of the "stack" at magnitude -5 -- brighter than the planet Venus! Moreover . . . instead of flickering out into invisibility at MECO, what was observed was a "puff" of vapor. Thereafter, the Shuttle continued to be visible as it sailed off toward the northeast horizon. Moreover, with binoculars, you could actually see the separation of the whitish orbiter from the dull orange external tank! A spectacular sight, indeed! I would suspect that this type of display will again be visible next month, but ONLY if the Shuttle gets off on schedule! If the flight is delayed even by one day (to December 7), then the launch will occur about 24 minutes earlier . . . before local sunset in N. Y. I can't honestly say whether or not the illumination angle on the vehicle will allow us to still see it -- my gut feeling says yes, but we've never had a mission launch so close to just before sunset here in N. Y., so we really have no precedent for determining what might be seen (as compared to just after sundown with the 1991 flight). Any more of a delay would probably result in no visibility at all; the launch would come before 4 p.m. and the sky is pretty bright at that time. We'll shall see . . . -- 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
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