Monday 1 January 2007

A good start of the new year!

The first evening of 2007 was very clear. Hopefully this sets the trend for 2007!

It was quite windy, and observations were done in twilight and with a near-full moon above the horizon. As a result, the images are quite fogged out.

Targets were Lacrosse 3 (97-064A, #25017) and the International Space Station (see image below)

97-064A did not show up well on the images: faint trails which almost drowned in the background fog. It was about mag. +3. I dropped one point from the second image obtained, as it was obviously in error. Hence 3 positions were left. 97-064A was some 0.5s late relative to a 3 day old elset.

ISS (98-067A) made a nice pass culminating at 40 degrees elevation. I picked it up low in the west, it was mag. -1 throughout the pass (I could not see its low eastern trajectory part though). Around culmination and after it it was a bit orange again. Positions were obtained for calibration purposes. Below is the first of the two images of ISS I took: it is still low in the West here:

(click image to enlarge)

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