I have GTOPO30 implemented (at least as far as generating the ISS/Venus transit track; subscriber reports will take a bit more work), so the currently posted text files giving the ground tracks reflect the elevations above the ellipsoid / geoid / Geoid / or something... In any case, the ones I've checked (up to about 4000 meters, and down to -30 meters) are quite close to what CalSKY gives. I originally typed GOTO30 up there... too little sleep... must have had nightmares about programming in BASIC and FORTRAN ;-) Hopefully, the MCC will update their ISS TLE page by at least 23:00 UTC (6 PM Central Daylight Time, Houston), in which case I'll generate new tracks & a bunch of zoomed-in maps. If they don't, I'll fall back on OIG. Tuesday, there was a high elevation Jupiter encounter thru Charlotte, NC (~160 miles round-trip). The night before, I ran an OIG track, and it shifted by only about 100 meters from the MCC track, predicted over 7 days earlier. I was all set to make the trip, having downloaded aerial photographs into DeLorme Topo USA 5.0 (a REALLY COOL program!), when I plotted the hot-off-the-press MCC track... it was 1.5 miles to the NW of the previous predictions! The weather was iffy (but naturally turned out good), and I was out of time for doing another Topo USA analysis, so in frustration, I aborted. I don't have precise data, but a subscriber in Charlotte who was between the 2 tracks indeed confirmed that the new MCC track was substantially right- and the OIG track from only about 20 hours before was substantially wrong! So if possible, I'll be placing my bet on MCC; caveat emptor, CalSKY believers ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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