From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: January 31, 2010 6:50:40 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Mars at Opposition

PC control though...

On 01/02/2010, at 12:43 PM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

Milton, 

I don`t know if this any good to you but if you join this group; 

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/satellitetracker/

then download the appropriate items in the Files section you have an application which will track satellites. You then have to apply for membership of Space Track (normal difficulties with membership perhaps because of terrorism & the American government that has to approve this) & download satellite TLE`s. If you download the full catalog file in File & download TLE of Satellite Tracker v2.4.8 Freeware you might identify your satellite you`re looking for..

Mark.

On 01/02/2010, at 12:24 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote:

Hi Alan;

On 31-Jan-10, at 5:17 PM, Alan Friedman wrote:

>
>
> Nice work on a very cold night Jim! I was out for an hour and half
> and spent about the same amount of time getting the feeling back in
> my fingers when I was done.
>
> Milton, there is little advantage to an obstruction-free design for
> imaging. This is not the case with visual observing, of course.

I've read that too.

However I would think that with most SCT's type scopes having 20 to
30% obstruction due to the secondary and hole through the main mirror,
you'd be losing a fair amount of light. Even worse for some of those
short focal length Newtonian AstroGraph type scopes.

On a side note, does anyone have a link to any web sites that can
determine the identity of very faint satellites, given an RA / Dec
position at a known date time? I have a very faint (like Mag 20 or
fainter) satellite that I captured on 2 frames when imaging IC 417 in
Auriga, and I'd like to know what I captured. It looks to be slowly
rotating too as the track thickness increases slightly in both frames.

TTYL..

PS: Very nice Mars image for -9°F temps too.

Milton Aupperle