Hi Clément, I don't know about the second pass: engine firing or water dump, but I tend to think the region of darkness observed first pass (which I saw at ~exactly the time in nearby S.E. New Brunswick) was probably an illusion. I watched this pass from 22h23 to 22h27 at a 73 deg. culminating pass to shadow entry, mostly through my 10" reflector. I saw nothing but the satellite. The shuttle and ISS stack were sharp, bright and clearly visable as a lopsided T shape. I also saw a bright bulge from the shuttle tail fin and a constriction then blob on the top of the ISS stack (the Progress I believe). Quite a sight, just make sure to catch it early with a wide angle to the sun or its brightness overcomes the detail. -Tyler MacKenzie PS: I saw a globalstar rocket depletion burn early this year and it too curved into a strange reflexing trumpet shape, and was huge (several degrees across) and bright. I assume the very high drag to mass ratio of ice crystals would cause (especially at the low shuttle height) it to move lower and proceed and to curl around the shuttle quite quickly. I'm sorry I didn't go to see the second pass last night! ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Tue Oct 17 2000 - 07:54:16 PDT