re: Accurate Information at NASA Web Site?

Walter Nissen (dk058@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 11:16:46 -0400 (EDT)

Rob Miller writes: 
 
> Has anyone visited this Web site? 
> http://www.osf.hq.nasa.gov/mir/mirvis.html 
 
> The site is described as having visibility info for Mir for a large 
> number of cities.  I checked Cedar Rapids, Iowa for today's 
> possibilities and noticed listings different than the ones I get from 
> the Berkeley site. 
 
> Why the difference? 
 
Jay Respler writes: 
 
> Most likely because they are using different elements and one doesn't 
> update as often as the other. 
 
Has anyone actually verified this hypothesis?  I recall that some earlier 
JSC efforts used extremely crude approximations about which passes would 
be visible, with the result that there was sometimes little resemblance 
between the published, "official predictions" and the output from reliable 
programs like QuickSat. 
 
Cheers. 
 
Walter Nissen           dk058@cleveland.freenet.edu 
-81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation 
 
P.S.  The spectacular lunar occultation of Aldebaran occurs very early 
tomorrow morning (Tuesday).  See the July S&T or the IOTA Web page, 
http://www.sky.net/~robinson/iotandx.htm. 
 
--- 
 
Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.   Lord Acton