Maybe I should address this to Chuck Hards since this is predicted to happen very near his work place. Hey Chuck, do you think you'll be working the afternoon of Sunday the 21st? On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west. Put another way, that works out to Redwood Road midway between I-215 and Center Street in North Salt Lake. Weather permitting I plan on showing up with telescope, solar filter and video recorder. Anyone else wishing to show up is welcome. Patrick
It appears this crossing will last less than a second. Will you have a real-time display for the video? How magnified are you planning to observe? What do you expect to be able to see? Jim ---- Jim Cobb james@cobb.name On Dec 12, 2003, at 3:26 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
Maybe I should address this to Chuck Hards since this is predicted to happen very near his work place.
Hey Chuck, do you think you'll be working the afternoon of Sunday the 21st?
On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west.
Put another way, that works out to Redwood Road midway between I-215 and Center Street in North Salt Lake.
Weather permitting I plan on showing up with telescope, solar filter and video recorder. Anyone else wishing to show up is welcome.
Patrick
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On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west.
You're saying afternoon, so I assume 14:53:46 is military time, not UT? If UT, it would be early morning here. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/
Chuck Hards wrote:
Good thing its on a Sunday, if it were on a weekday the traffic would be dangerous. There are no sidewalks anywhere near that area, you'll have to set up in a private parking lot.
Theoretically we could be as much as 6.1 km from the centerline and still see it. Judging from what I see on the map there are a number of side streets and parking lots (Flying J?) within a couple hundred meters so I think (hope) we'll be ok. Chuck Hards wrote:
You're saying afternoon, so I assume 14:53:46 is military time, not UT?
Having retired from military life in '94 I like to think of it as 24 hour clock time, but yes, you are correct, I am talking MST, not UT. Cheers! Patrick
Jim, you'll see a tiny silhouette of the ISS against the solar disk. Use at least 50x. Patricks mileage may vary. I'd shoot a still myself, but with my hand still in a cast it will be impossible. I'll either watch Patricks monitor or just stay glued to my own eyepiece. Patrick, I have a 5" B&W monitor with RCA inputs that I can bring if needed. Let me know. C. --- James Cobb <james@cobb.name> wrote:
It appears this crossing will last less than a second. Will you have a real-time display for the video? How magnified are you planning to observe? What do you expect to be able to see?
Jim ---- Jim Cobb james@cobb.name On Dec 12, 2003, at 3:26 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
Maybe I should address this to Chuck Hards since this is predicted to happen very near his work place.
Hey Chuck, do you think you'll be working the afternoon of Sunday the 21st?
On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west.
Put another way, that works out to Redwood Road midway between I-215 and Center Street in North Salt Lake.
Weather permitting I plan on showing up with telescope, solar filter and video recorder. Anyone else wishing to show up is welcome.
Patrick
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Chuck or Patrick, Could you please clarify the time question Chuck asked? Is the time Patrick listed military or local (UT) time??? Could we get directions to the loaction you two will be at? I may try to get some gear together and come depending on final time. Thanks, Jim Stitley 260-0265 Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote: Jim, you'll see a tiny silhouette of the ISS against the solar disk. Use at least 50x. Patricks mileage may vary. I'd shoot a still myself, but with my hand still in a cast it will be impossible. I'll either watch Patricks monitor or just stay glued to my own eyepiece. Patrick, I have a 5" B&W monitor with RCA inputs that I can bring if needed. Let me know. C. --- James Cobb wrote:
It appears this crossing will last less than a second. Will you have a real-time display for the video? How magnified are you planning to observe? What do you expect to be able to see?
Jim ---- Jim Cobb james@cobb.name On Dec 12, 2003, at 3:26 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
Maybe I should address this to Chuck Hards since this is predicted to happen very near his work place.
Hey Chuck, do you think you'll be working the afternoon of Sunday the 21st?
On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west.
Put another way, that works out to Redwood Road midway between I-215 and Center Street in North Salt Lake.
Weather permitting I plan on showing up with telescope, solar filter and video recorder. Anyone else wishing to show up is welcome.
Patrick
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Jim Stitley wrote:
Chuck or Patrick, Could you please clarify the time question Chuck asked?
MST.
Could we get directions to the loaction you two will be at? Try going here:
http://geography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mapq... and entering 40.8387 in the lower latitude box and -111.9342 in the lower longitude box. If it works, it should produce a detailed map showing you how to get there. Patrick p.s. I feel I should mention that all this is based on a *prediction*. Should ISS's orbit change we will not see anything.
I have a better one... By my calculations (hehe, sound so scientific) At 14:54:12 local time on 2003/12/21 at a location of (111 48 01 W) (40 42 00 N) [or the parking lot of the REI 3285 E 3300 S] it will cross. Azimuth of 215.4998, altitude +17.1277. http://www.xmission.com/~cyanics/images/chart.jpg The link is a screen grab from the charting software. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong ;-) The line represents ISS. Cheers, James
James Helsby wrote:
I have a better one...
By my calculations (hehe, sound so scientific)
At 14:54:12 local time on 2003/12/21 at a location of (111 48 01 W) (40 42 00 N) [or the parking lot of the REI 3285 E 3300 S] it will cross.
Sounds about right as the path is moving from NW to SE. However, since the transit happens so low in the sky I went with the NSL site so as to rule out any possibility of having the Sun behind a mountain (remember last month's eclipse?). Still, it would be fun to have observers at different locations and compare results afterwards. Patrick
SKYCHART III I originally got skychart back in college, during astronomy classes, and just kept the software for that exact reason ;-) -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+cyanics=xmission.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+cyanics=xmission.com@mailman.xmission.com ] On Behalf Of Chris Clark Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 9:50 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] Re: ISS may cross Sun On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, James Helsby wrote:
The link is a screen grab from the charting software.
Which software produced that image? Chris _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
What orbital elements are others using for ISS? I downloaded
ISS (ZARYA) 1 25544U 98067A 03347.16153959 .00012592 00000-0 12817-3 0 8862 2 25544 51.6285 197.0395 0006049 240.9758 218.2116 15.65542665288988
from NORAD http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/stations.txt Is there a better source of elements I should be using? Using xephem I'm not quite getting agreement on the timing of the transit with other predictions I've seen on this thread. Alternatively, how about Delta T (i.e. TT - UT1)? Xephem uses a value of 67.45. It would be interesting to compare the predictions of the various charting packages and the observed timing. Jim On Dec 12, 2003, at 5:58 PM, James Helsby wrote:
I have a better one...
By my calculations (hehe, sound so scientific)
At 14:54:12 local time on 2003/12/21 at a location of (111 48 01 W) (40 42 00 N) [or the parking lot of the REI 3285 E 3300 S] it will cross.
Azimuth of 215.4998, altitude +17.1277.
http://www.xmission.com/~cyanics/images/chart.jpg
The link is a screen grab from the charting software. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong ;-) The line represents ISS.
Cheers,
James
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The ones I used for my initial calculations were dated 03346.08309035, about a day older than yours, which makes since since I downloaded them a few days ago. That you are using newer TLEs could account for the difference. The current ones are dated 03347.85162037 but I have not run them yet. I plan on one final run the night before the transit to see if the orbit has changed. I get my TLEs from the NASA/GSFC Orbital Information Group site. If you're not registered there you need to register first. Do that at: http://oig1.gsfc.nasa.gov/scripts/foxweb.exe/newappl@app01?tdac=B6XRQIDBJIBS... Patrick James Cobb wrote:
What orbital elements are others using for ISS? I downloaded
ISS (ZARYA) 1 25544U 98067A 03347.16153959 .00012592 00000-0 12817-3 0 8862 2 25544 51.6285 197.0395 0006049 240.9758 218.2116 15.65542665288988
from NORAD http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/stations.txt
Is there a better source of elements I should be using? Using xephem I'm not quite getting agreement on the timing of the transit with other predictions I've seen on this thread.
Alternatively, how about Delta T (i.e. TT - UT1)? Xephem uses a value of 67.45.
It would be interesting to compare the predictions of the various charting packages and the observed timing0
James Cobb wrote:
It appears this crossing will last less than a second.
You are correct. Much less than one second. I'll have a device hooked up to the system that receives the time signal from the GPS constellation and puts it on the video. It's good to .001" so from that I should be able to say exactly how long the transit takes.
Will you have a real-time display for the video? The video signal from the camera feeds into a combination TV/VCR so, yes, real time video will be available.
How magnified are you planning to observe? My C-5 with an f/5 focal reducer gets the focal length down to 625mm. Unfortunately that still does not show the entire disk of the Sun so I'm looking around looking for something around 300mm. (Ideas, anyone?)
What do you expect to be able to see? Probably not a lot. Not only will it cross the disk very quickly but because it will be fairly low in the sky it will be about 1,885 km away which will make it pretty small. I saw a lunar transit a few weeks back using just my eyeball and ISS was just a blur.
One of these days we're going to get a transit high in the sky which will put it less than 400 km away. Much bigger target then. Personally, however, I'm looking for it to cross a crescent Moon when it's high in the sky. That would make for a very pretty picture. Patrick
I wont be at work, but thats worth driving out for. Good thing its on a Sunday, if it were on a weekday the traffic would be dangerous. There are no sidewalks anywhere near that area, you'll have to set up in a private parking lot. C. --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
Maybe I should address this to Chuck Hards since this is predicted to happen very near his work place.
Hey Chuck, do you think you'll be working the afternoon of Sunday the 21st?
On that afternoon at 14:53:46 ISS is predicted to pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from 40.8387 degrees north, 111.9342 degrees west.
Put another way, that works out to Redwood Road midway between I-215 and Center Street in North Salt Lake.
Weather permitting I plan on showing up with telescope, solar filter and video recorder. Anyone else wishing to show up is welcome.
Patrick
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participants (6)
-
Chris Clark -
Chuck Hards -
James Cobb -
James Helsby -
Jim Stitley -
Patrick Wiggins