RE: Looking for citizens' visual or radio obs of Apollo lunar missions

From: Brian Webb (kd6nrp@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 20:51:06 EDT

  • Next message: Ed Cannon: "RE: Looking for citizens' visual or radio obs"

    Hi All:
    
    During Apollo 15 (July 1971) and Apollo 16 (April 1972), several people made
    a serious attempt to observe these spacecraft. Position data was relayed
    over the Astronet in 3.5-4.0 Mhz amateur radio band from Bellcom in
    Washington, D.C.
    
    I lived in Redondo Beach, California at the time. A ham radio operator named
    Clark  or Clarke Harris lived in nearby Gardena. He would get position data
    for his location and share it with me.
    
    In April 1972* I used the 16-inch schmitt-cassegrain telescope at El Camino
    College in Torrance, California to look for Apollo 16. I probably had the
    scope at in the right place and I saw some star-like objects, but I can't
    say for sure that I saw Apollo 16.
    
    Also, there was a photo in Sky & Telescope taken around 1970 of the TLI
    burn. TLI refers to trans-lunar injection, the firing of the Saturn third
    stage used to send the Apollo to the Moon. The photo was taken by an
    Australian amateur astronomer.
    
    By the way, today's Vandenberg Launch Net was partly inspired by the ham
    radio Astronet of the Apollo era.
    
    Regards,
    
    Brian Webb
    
    * I attempted the observation at about 03:00 UTC on a Monday when the
    spacraft was on its way to the Moon.
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe'
    in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org
    http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Oct 25 2002 - 20:54:21 EDT