At 01:14 24/03/01 , Thomas A. Troszak wrote: >Having seen the Mir reentry video on CNN last night, it becomes apparent >that the debris passed across the entire field of view in about 15 >seconds (I didn't actually time it yet), MUCH faster than a typical >"fast satellite" pass. Tom your dedeuction from the video isnt consistent with the immediate statement of the CNN correspondent Hugh Williams, who said it took a minute to a minute and a half to pass over Fiji. The time for an overhead pass of an object in a 100Km high circular orbit, can be worked out using plane geometry. The answer is about 2 minutes from 20 degrees elevation to 20 degrees elevation thru the zenith. One just calculates the great circle distance to an object at an elevation of 20 degrees and a height of 90 Km. double this answer, and calculate the fraction of the orbital period that this angle represents. A shorter time isnt possible. Tony Beresford ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 23 2001 - 23:45:22 PST