Observe the New Horizons Spacecraft as it leaves Earth
The New Horizons Spacecraft was Launched at 19:00 UT Jan. 19
The spacecraft is now speeding away from Earth towards Virgo, over Indonesia
Updated 2006 January 20, 18:30 UT
The New Horizons (NH) spacecraft was launched at 19:00 UT Jan. 19. Yanping Guo quickly updated the trajectory on the New Horizons ground track Web page that has predictions for a few dozen locations, mostly in the Indian Ocean, Asia, and Australia, and for all of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) observatories. NH is now about 1.05 million km above Micronesia, speeding towards a point about 2 deg. west of the star 95 Virginis. The predictions extend for 3 days from launch, so all stations have visibility sometime. The ephemeris starts at 19:34 UT when the spacecraft/rocket combination was over Zimbabwe, probably during its second-stage burn, which should have been visible from there and from eastern South Africa, and possibly low in the west from Reunion Island (it rose there at 19:37 UT). Sometime around 19:40 UT the second stage was jettisoned and the third stage ignited for about 1.5 minutes, which should have been spectacular in the southern skies of Mauritius and Reunion islands in the s.w. Indian Ocean. The Meteosat IR weather image indicated that it was clear across coastal areas of South Africa, and over Madagascar and the Indian Ocean islands, but with some clouds farther inland in Africa (such as at Johannesburg). At about 19:50, the spacecraft separated from the third stage, confirmed by telemetry from the rocket with a cheer in the NH Control Room here at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. At about that time, it should have entered sunlight and been visible from western Australia; around 19:55 UT, the first telemetry from the spacecraft was received from the Deep Space Network tracking station in Canberra. In fact, the spacecraft/rocket combination was spectacular in southwestern Australia - read an account here where you can also see some images of NH and its 3rd stage. The Sun had risen at the spacecraft by then; twilight was too bright to see the spacecraft from central Australia due to the delay in the launch by almost an hour from the start of the launch window. The tracking indicated that the spacecraft was about 0.1 deg. away from its predicted path; the Navigation team here at APL has a preliminary estimate of a 10 m/sec underburn relative to NH's planned trajectory. Now the spacecraft is visible from western and southern Asia, from the Middle East to Russia to India, and from most of the Indian Ocean; twilight is now too bright in areas farther east. It is probably 15th to 16th magnitude already. Unfortunately, the IR weather satellite image indicates that it is mostly cloudy across Japan, Korea, and most of China, as well as Indonesia and northern Australia and the southern Philippines. The satellite image shows clear skies over India, Indochina, and most of southernmost China; Taiwan, Luzon, and southwestern Australia. Hope some observers in those locations have obtained some images; if so, I'll post them here, or we'll put them on the NH Web site and I'll provide a link to that from here. NH will rise in Europe, first in the east at about 1h UT, and in the UK by 3h UT of Jan. 20, of course, getting fainter all the time. It rises here in the eastern USA at about 6h UT, then over half a million kilometers from Earth, well beyond the Moon's orbit, and probably 19th magnitude or fainter, way beyond the capability of my small telescopes. It is very clear here, and I hope someone does obtain some images, maybe also showing the 3rd-stage rocket. The brighter 2nd-stage rocket will be much farther away, now certainly several degrees away, since the 3rd-stage burn gave a large impulse to the spacecraft (and itself) that the 2nd-stage doesn't have. Probably by 0h UT, New Horizon's trajectory will be placed on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ephemeris Generator Web site . It is not there now. Use it especially if you can't find your location, or a nearby location, on the above New Horizons ground track site; the JPL site, in addition to having pull-down menus to select many cities and observatories from the MPC list, also can be used to manually input new locations. Of course, as the spacecraft moves even farther from the Earth, it will become fainter, to 15th to 19th magnitude for those areas probable. At the above JPL Ephemeris Generator Web site, you need to select the spacecraft (under the top section of "Target Body", called "Select Major Body", at the bottom of its section, it has a line "or choose from a list of [Sun and Planets]". Click on the down arrow just to the right of [Sun and Planets] and you get a menu of types of objects, select "Spacecraft" from it, then farther right click on "Display List" to select New Horizons, which should be there an hour after launch Good luck with your observations! David Dunham, IOTA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. (APL) with much help from Yanping Guo, APL New Horizons Trajectory Design lead (she set up the New Horizons Web site using my program for the topocentric ephemeris calculations there)