SeeSat-L Home Page

Introduction

Rules and Guidelines

SeeSat-L Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information

SeeSat-L Archives

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

SeeSat-L Members Page

Visual Satellite Observers Home Page

Introduction

SeeSat-L is the mailing list for visual satellite observers. It was created in December 1994 by Walter Nissen and Bart De Pontieu. Since July 2002, it has been maintained by Ted Molczan.

Thanks to the diverse interests of its participants, SeeSat-L has become an almost indispensable tool for the satellite observer, providing him/her with :

reports of exceptional observations, such as piloted spacecraft in close proximity, rocket burns, propellant dumps, space shuttle water dumps, re-entries, Iridium Flares, tethered satellites, etc...
the place to share satellite position and flash timing observations
assistance in identifying unknown satellites
discussions about observing techniques, prediction software, estimating orbital elements, etc...
orbital elements of recent launches, spy satellites, and many others
trajectory and orbital elements of upcoming launches
re-entry predictions of decaying satellites
updates of the flash period program of the Belgian Working Group Satellites
and much more.

Rules and Guidelines

Purpose and Acceptable Use

SeeSat-L is intended to facilitate rapid, reliable communications among visual satellite observers. Visual observations and CLOSELY related subjects are its sole focus; all else are off-topic.

SeeSat-L is intended to be the big tent under which our small but diverse hobby can thrive. We are accepting of all who contribute, regardless of their experience or area of special interest.

For example, beginners are welcome to describe their sightings of the ISS, and those who make positional or flash period observations are welcome to post their mostly numerical data.

Personal attacks against anyone are not tolerated on SeeSat-L; fortunately, such incidents have been rare.

If someone has posted something that you believe to be off-topic, or that you find abusive or offensive, please do not post a response to SeeSat-L, but please do e-mail your concerns to the administrator.

If you have suggestions regarding the operation and use of SeeSat-L, please feel free to send an e-mail to the administrator, or to start a discussion on UseSat-L, which exists for that purpose. Anyone may subscribe by sending a message with the word subscribe as the subject, addressed to UseSat-L-request@satobs.org

Communicate Observations Clearly

Please state the date and time of your observations, preferably as UTC (co-ordinated universal time). If you use local time, please state whether or not it is standard or daylight-saving time, and state the number of hours ahead or behind UTC.

If your observation includes positional information, whether descriptive or numeric, please include the latitude and longitude of your observing site, or at least the geographical name of the place.

This data is especially important if you are requesting assistance to identify an unknown satellite.

If you know the identity of the object you observed, then you should include its catalog number and/or international designation. You may also include its name.

Do Not Post Elements Originating from Space Track

When posting to SeeSat-L, you must comply with Space-Track.org's user agreement, by not posting elements or other data, e.g. RCS values, that originated from that site. This SeeSat-L rule also includes elements of unclassified objects obtained from NASA/OIG or third parties - even those who have Space Track's permission to distribute elements, since it is almost impossible to later prove how the data was sourced. This applies also to historical elements, since most of those now are also available from Space-Track.org.

Where past practice was to include an elset of an unclassified object to substantiate an argument, now it is best to state only its name, international designator, catalogue number and perhaps the epoch or serial number of the elset in question, and leave it to interested readers to obtain the actual elset, or include a link to a source.

Plain Text Only, With No Attachments

SeeSat-L accepts only plain text messages (not html and not rtf), without attached files.

Please avoid:

excessive quoting when sending responses to SeeSat-L.
sig-lines longer than 4 lines
commercial advertisements

Subscription Info

To SUBSCRIBE
send a message with the word 'subscribe' in the SUBJECT field to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org

After you have received notice that you have been subscribed
send posts to SeeSat-L@satobs.org

To UNSUBSCRIBE
send a message with the word 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT field to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org

For General Info
send a message with the word 'help' in the SUBJECT field to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org

Your (un )subscription request will be automatically handled by the software, so please make sure you follow the instructions above EXACTLY.

Read the SeeSat-L Archives

Read past SeeSat-L messages at our Hypermail-Archive.

Search the SeeSat-L Archives

Google search the www.satobs.org domain, i.e., mostly the SeeSat-L archives. Note that Google sometimes takes a few months to update their archives of our site.

Tip: To avoid cluttering your search results with monthly index pages, include the following search term: -"other mail archives"