My father was the Team Leader of the Adelaide (South Australia) Moonwatch team (around 15 observers) that successfully observed Sputnik rocket body and payload and they carefully recorded their observations and sent them to the Smithsonian. I will call him today and see if he can throw any light on this. Understanding that he is now 87, he may remember the event clearly or not at all. Of course, all records went to the Smithsonian, albeit in a roundabout way as the University of Adelaide would not transmit them, based on antipathy to the Soviet Union by the physics dean, Professor Huxley, brother of the Huxley family of literary fame. I still have the Moonwatch telescope used to observe Sputnik and somewhere I have recorded notes after asking my father exactly how it was done. I will post these to the list. Perth is UTC + 8:00 and Adelaide is UTC + 9:30. DST was not even thought about in Australia in 1957. Cheers, Bill -----Original Message----- From: seesat-l-bounces+billfrost=bigpond.com@satobs.org [mailto:seesat-l-bounces+billfrost=bigpond.com@satobs.org] On Behalf Of Ted Molczan Sent: Thursday, 21 July 2011 1:11 AM To: seesat-l@satobs.org Subject: RE: Seeking identification of stars in photo George Roberts wrote: > >Perth is at > > 31.933S, 115.833 E > That was helpful, thanks. Plus last night when I emailed I was about > to go to bed. > > If the picture was taken near perth and the camera frame was paralell > with the horizon and the picture was taken on oct 9, 1957 utc then the picture > was taken at 18:55 UTC +/- 10 minutes. Additionally for every degree the > camera is out of level could add 11 minutes to the error (this 11 > minutes was determined for this specific alt/azi/lat/declination > position configuration). > > I believe this works out to 2:55AM on oct 10 if they didn't use DST in > Perth in 1957 but I'm much less sure of the time zone. The time in > UTC I have much more confidence in. I have fairly accurate preliminary orbits covering Oct 9, which enable me to state with confidence that the image could not have been taken on that date. As I mentioned in one of my posts yesterday, I have narrowed the date/time to Oct 27 near 20:40 UTC or Oct 28 near 20:21 UTC. The track on either date disagrees somewhat with my preliminary orbits. I have yet to determine whether the elements are off, or my guess of the coordinates of the photographer is incorrect. The photo is attributed to the time-keeper of the Perth Moonwatch team. If so, then assuming he took the photo while on duty with the team, the site would have been Moonwatch station 601, located at 32.00194 S, 115.85556 E, 5 m (WGS-84). The SAO's (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory) final table of observations lists observations on Oct 28 UTC, but my analysis revealed that they almost certainly were made on Oct 29 UTC (a different site's data on the same date was similarly afflicted, so probably an error in compiling the table). Since the SAO did not report any station 601 obs on Oct 27 or 28, it is possible that the team did not observe on those dates, in which case, the photo could have been taken from elsewhere, e.g. the time-keeper's home. It is also possible that the team did observe, but that session did not yield observations worth reporting to SAO, or that SAO decided not to publish them. A search of the SAO's archives may be required to resolve the question. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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