My buddy Matt Broscious and I bagged an ISS lunar transit in the wee hours of the morning last Saturday, August 28, from a location a bit northeast of Damascus, Maryland. Our 80-frame movie of the event has been posted here for viewing: http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/videos/IssLunarTransit-040828.wmv Please note that it's a 2.5MB file. Here are the specifics for this catch (Tom Fly transit alert at bottom of message): August 28, 2004 02:18:06 to 02:18:08 EDT (duration about 2.7 seconds) Location: Northeast of Damascus, Maryland; corner of New Cut and Florence Roads Lat: 39d 19.268m Long: 77d 08.673m Equipment: 4 1/2" Orion Starblast reflector Supercircuits PC23C video camera; output sent to and recorded on a digital video camera. This was truly a collaborative effort! Having been very busy recently, I didn't check Tom's transit alert email until late Friday afternoon and was shocked to find this opportunity just 10 hours away! I quickly posted a note to a few local amateur astronomers, including the alert notice, to see if there was any other interest. When Matt responded and did the preliminary leg work of plotting the path, we decided to set the alarms for 1am and go for it! Thanks to Matt's preparations, when he arrived at my house at 1:10am we quickly figured out to where along the path's centerline we'd drive. He had his GPS and laptop rigged up to continuously plot our current location on his DeLorme mapping software. THIS WAS SWEET!!! We pick a road (New Cut) which was right on the predicted path and it turned out to be a great place from which to make the attempt. We set up, went throught the obligatory last minute panic mode when we experienced technical difficulties, and then got everything in order just in time for the the transit. We used my 4 1/2" Starblast with the Supercircuits camera inserted into the focuser. The output was directed to Matt's digital video camera for digital recording. Our thanks to Tom for his continuing transit alerts and also for providing me a place to upload the large video file. -Ron Robisch Monrovia MD name: Ron Robisch latitude: 39.3706 N longitude: 77.2358 W elevation: 570 ft alert radius: 40 mi time zone: -4.0 last alert: 24 Aug 2004 | 14:57:19 Minimum transit distances during the current reporting period: Sun 39.8 mi Moon 5.8 * Mercury 62.1 * Venus 41.2 Mars none within 100 miles Jupiter none * Saturn 65.2 A - travel distance (miles) and direction B - date C - time D - elevation angle of the ISS E - azimuth angle of the ISS ( + is East from North; - is W from N) F - range (miles) G - latitude for observing the transit H - longitude I - how far (miles) can I be from the centerline? For other than solar transits: J - lunar transits: is space station sunlit? planetary encounters: 1=Mercury; 2=Venus; 4=Mars; 5=Jupiter; 6=Saturn K - sun elevation angle L - sun/moon or sun/planet separation angle A------- B----- C----- D--- E----- F--- G------- H-------- I---- J K---- L---- 42.2 SW 28 Aug 21801 17.6 -141.9 609 38.8873 -77.7151 3.0 n -39.3 154.7 35.6 SW 28 Aug 21802 17.5 -141.9 611 38.9545 -77.6273 3.1 n -39.2 154.7 29.1 SW 28 Aug 21803 17.4 -141.8 613 39.0219 -77.5391 3.1 n -39.2 154.7 22.6 SW 28 Aug 21804 17.3 -141.7 615 39.0894 -77.4505 3.1 n -39.1 154.7 16.2 SW 28 Aug 21805 17.2 -141.7 617 39.1571 -77.3614 3.1 n -39.0 154.7 10.3 S 28 Aug 21806 17.1 -141.6 620 39.2250 -77.2719 3.1 n -38.9 154.7 6.1 SE 28 Aug 21807 17.0 -141.6 622 39.2930 -77.1820 3.1 n -38.8 154.7 5.8 SE 07.26 39.3106 -77.1587 3.1 7.7 E 28 Aug 21808 16.9 -141.5 624 39.3612 -77.0917 3.1 n -38.7 154.7 13.2 E 28 Aug 21809 16.8 -141.4 627 39.4292 -77.0016 3.1 n -38.6 154.7 19.5 NE 28 Aug 21810 16.7 -141.4 629 39.4977 -76.9103 3.2 n -38.5 154.7 26.1 NE 28 Aug 21811 16.6 -141.3 631 39.5665 -76.8186 3.2 n -38.4 154.7 32.8 NE 28 Aug 21812 16.5 -141.2 634 39.6355 -76.7264 3.2 n -38.3 154.7 39.6 NE 28 Aug 21813 16.4 -141.2 636 39.7046 -76.6337 3.2 n -38.3 154.7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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