Back in April, I serendipitously recorded two near-polar satellites with orbital inclinations i between 82˚ and 88˚ that had an east-to-west component of motion instead of the expected west-to-east. I am at latitude 43˚ N and the satellites were the following: Cosmos 2039 1989-074B i = 82.6˚ Observation date (UT): 20 Apr 2020 ONEWEB-0022 2020-008E i = 87.5˚ Observation date (UT): 21 Apr 2020 I suspect that the Earth’s rotation ~ 0.5 km/s may have something to do with these prograde satellites appearing to move slightly retrograde, but hope someone here can better explain the phenomenon or point us towards a reference. Thanks much! David Oesper _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Mon Oct 19 2020 - 10:10:22 UTC
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