I used to track sat's all the time with the kids. Have watched the Mir
Space Station traverse the sky hundreds of times. Some nights we could
capture two transits. As well, we captured weather sats and comsats. IIS
is a bit harder to capture as it travels in, if I remember correctly, a
more Southerly route.
I use David Ransom's STSPlus program to track sats. It's a DOS program
and last update was 2002. However, the app is very cool and works like a
charm in XPPro and Vista.
http://celestrak.com/software/dransom/stsplus.html . For those
interested, there IS a bit of a learning curve. But it's well worth the
time. You can amaze your friends and neighbors and the kids will think
you're a genius! ;)
STSPLus utilizes current TLE (two line elements) provided by NORAD
(http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/) The TLE's are two lines of
numeric entries used in mapping the trajectory of an object over the
map. There are other sat track packages but for me, STSPlus is way cool,
old school and the kids loved it!
Best time to capture a sat transit is predawn at 60 - 90 minutes before
sunrise and late to post twilight in the evening. Usually 10PM local
time is about as late as you can still get a visual and that would be a
partial Western transit.
The last time my son and I caught a Perseid show, maybe six or seven
years ago, at peak we were counting 500+ meteors per hour. Time stamp
was in the 4AM - 5AM slot. it was phenomenal.
Chap
'-*****
On 8/11/2011 2:29 PM, Dave KK7SS wrote:
> FYI and FWIW..
> Best ISS passes for Sat am over Seattle area are
> 4:41 - 4:51 am
> 6:16 - 6:26 am
>
> Pass will be from NW to E
>
> --
> Dave G KK7SS
> Richland, WA
>
> '59 Morris Minor 1000 - working on it..
> '65 Sprite - in process :(
> '76 Midget - co-owned with #4 Son :)
> '06 Honda Civic Hybrid
>
> ----- "Rick Bastedo" <rbastedo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Some observers will also see the International Space Station, which
>>
>> coincidentally flies over many US towns and cities during the shower's
>> peak"
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