http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMBBK3VQUD_iss_0.html It states, "Few of the images of this unusual astronomical event will have been as unique as those taken by Tomás." In fact, apparently none are; nor is there any guarantee that during the Venus transit of 2012, the orbit of the ISS will be favorably aligned, relative to the Earth's terminator, even to allow such a photo / video; so Tomás' photo may be IT, now and forever. Hopefully, of course, something grander will be in the skies during the transit of Venus in 2138, though it's not unlikely that anyone reading this will see it... Probably the most charming aspect of this story is that, after all of my efforts, and those of Arnold Barmettler / CalSKY, to precisely forecast the ISS / Venus transit path, Tomás was merely trying to get a video of the ISS passing across the Sun coincident with Venus, SOMEWHAT NEAR Venus! When he saw that his Uncle's home was within the ISS / Sun transit path, that was where he went. So, Tomás' video, which gives an impression (quoting Ted Molczan) of: "A beautiful display of celestial mechanics, resulting from a considerable knowledge of what's under the hood." * in fact had as much to do with where his Uncle happened to buy a house!... * And, I might add, brilliant software engineering! "As with life in general, luck plays a big part in the pursuit of transits ;-)" http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2004/0257.html Currently, there also appears to be some confusion regarding the accuracy of the predictions, (and some ironies, as well!). As late as my final predictions of June 7, I'd been trumpeting the superiority of the MCC generated TLEs (at least, when they're not too old) that I use for my transit alerts, over the OIG TLEs that CalSKY presently uses (when they're nearer in time to the event than an available MCC TLE). However my finding, after the fact- using Rob's SkyMap 6.6, which normally is in extremely close agreement with my WorldView-generated ground tracks- is that the MCC computed track was about 225 meters SSE of the actual path, while a likely OIG computed ground track would have been about 140 meters NNW of the actual path; Tomás' uncle's patio was only about 65 meters NNW of the actual path! And in fact, for about 25 milliseconds, the main solar panels of the ISS- as well as a bit more of it- passed directly between Tomás, Gitka, and Zuzka, and the planetary disk of Venus! http://iss-transit.sourceforge.net/MissionAccomplished.html However, Arnold is indicating that, by his computations, the MCC TLE would have predicted a dead-hit from Tomás' location (and thus was 67 meters NNW of the actual path), while the OIG TLE nearest to the event (which actually corresponds to a time about 68 seconds after Tomás' observation, and so would not have been available for predictive purposes) would have predicted a path 2.4 Venus's (312 meters) NNW of the actual path. http://eclipse.astronomie.info/transit/venus/isstransit/historicalimage.html By my analysis of Tomás' MapQuest map (combined with his transit photo), which was generated from CalSKY's prediction, the CalSKY prediction at the time was about 97 meters NNW of the actual transit path. The relevant TLEs are: ISSmcc 1 25544U 98067A 04159.51929753 .00020000 00000-0 20000-3 0 9009 2 25544 51.6330 15.0298 0005537 207.1571 152.9300 15.68796178 36803 ISSoig1 1 25544U 98067A 04160.18136574 .00014863 00000-0 13184-3 0 9471 2 25544 51.6330 11.6482 0005508 205.6040 296.1391 15.68807781316908 ISSoig2 1 25544U 98067A 04160.34703704 .00014830 00000-0 13154-3 0 9486 2 25544 51.6332 10.8038 0005500 206.3688 151.6668 15.68812729316928 ISSoig3 1 25544U 98067A 04160.42390752 .00014992 00000-0 13290-3 0 9491 2 25544 51.6329 10.4117 0005395 206.7073 225.7658 15.68815833316945 The observer location data is: 48.2579° N (i.e., 48°15'28.6" N); 17.0272° E (i.e., 17°01'38" E); elevation 208 meters (relative to the WGS84 ellipsoid). Some people may be interested in running this thru Guide 8.0, The Sky, etc., to see how their results compare. Walter Nissen had pointed out the coincidence of the date of the Venus transit: 2004-06-08, and noted that Venus was in transit across the face of the Sun at: y m d h m s 2004-06-08 10 12 14.16182022... UTC Russell Eberst subsequently pointed out the "double coincidence" that last year, Mercury was in transit at: y m d h m s 2003-05-07 09 11 13.15171921... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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