I had written: >Since Hubble is at a 28 degree inclination, ... >If you are too far north or south on the earth >(above or below 38 degrees N or S latitude) >then you won't see it at all. More than one of you, like Jonathan T. Wojack below, responded with something like: >Not precisely. In December of 1999, I sighted the Space Shuttle/HST >complex, at about 17 degrees altitude, and I live at 39.75 degrees north >of the equator. And you are all correct. When I originally wrote what I did I had the word "about" before "38 degrees," using the rule of thumb of inclination plus 10 degrees. When I modified the sentence to include southern hemisphere observers, I dropped the "about". I knew at the time that I was sticking my neck out for the technically astute to axe me with comments -- and deservedly so. :) To be exact, here's an excerpt from a post to SeeSat by Ted Molczan in Sept 99: ========================================== Here is a simple procedure to determine the Maximum Elevation that a satellite will reach (at apogee), when observed from a latitude greater than its orbital inclination. Symbols used in the procedure are defined as follows: a = semi-major axis, km A = apogee, km dlat = difference between latitude of observer and inclination, deg e = eccentricity i = inclination, deg latobs = latitude of observer, deg MaxEl = maximum elevation above observer's horizon, deg n = mean motion, rev/d Re = observer's distance from Earth's centre, km (Earth's mean radius of 6371 km is a suitable approximation for most purposes) Procedure: a = (8681663.653 / n) ^ (2/3) A = a * (1 + e) dlat = abs(latobs) - i MaxEl = atan((A * cos(dlat) - Re) / (A * sin(dlat))) ========================================== Using HST 13.3 4.3 0.0 3.0 v 71 1 20580U 90037B 00066.66540525 .00005791 00000-0 57525-3 0 3015 2 20580 28.4644 168.4790 0014658 96.6493 263.5762 14.89691643341102 results in the possibility of HST, when at apogee, culminating at about 19.4 degrees above the horizon for Jonathan's latitude. At 45 degrees latitude, culmination at apogee would be 9.3 degrees. Ralph McConahy 34.8829N 117.0064W 670m ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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