Hello, This evening I was very lucky. It has been raining the whole week but today it was a very clear evening so I had the opportunity to watch a STS99 with external tank transit at my observing place Ryckevelde. Some twenty minutes after launch at 18:02 UTC two bright dots became visible low at the horizon near the constellation of Lyra. Those two dots were seperated by approximately 1 degree and the lowest dot had an extinct reddish colour which I presume it was the external tank, but in front of the external tank there was a cloud of vapour visible. The Shuttle seemed to show some variations but that became steady in the constellation of Draco. At 18:04:08s a large cloud of vapour began to stream out of the external tank and reached at least(!) a magnitude of -4 ! The cloud was at least 5 degrees in diameter and lasted for about 5 to 10 seconds. In the constellation of UMA the cloud disappeared en the two dots went into the shadow of the Earth. I made some photographs of it and hope it will give something. This was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen !!!!!! Greetings, Tristan Cools Belgian Working Group Satellites(BWGS) Damse Vaart: 3.2478E/51.2277N - OBS place 1 Ryckevelde: 3.2856E/51.2045N - OBS place 2 Brugge: 3.2166E/51.2104N - OBS place 3(home) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 11 2000 - 11:26:35 PST