Re: NEAR spacecraft to shine brightly Thurs. night

Ron Dantowitz (ron@dantowitz.com)
Fri, 23 Jan 1998 03:12:59 -0500 (EST)

Hi David and SeeSat-ers:

We we clouded out for imaging the STS ascent, but aquired NEAR at 70,000km
with a 24" scope and a Pulnix CCD video camera with a Gen II amplifier.
Spacecraft was really cooking!

Followed the spacecraft down to about 56,000 km and then it clouded over
only one hour before the flare.  We had hoped to time the flare to high
precision, even had an cesium atomic clock feed- but clouds win over
technology sometimes.

Result: nice images at 70,000 km-->50,000 km then nil.  We tried.  It was
neat to see something coming right AT us!


-Ron Dantowitz
Boston Museum of Science
(617) 589-0272