CONTOUR visible on Friday night, Aug. 9/10
New: August 8 at 3h UTLocal predictions for the last good pass of CONTOUR visible from North America are given below, but you can also obtain more accurate local predictions for it by requesting Object CONTOUR at the JPL Horizons ephemeris Web site. CONTOUR will be visible as it rises in the west between 4:34 and 5:44 UT August 10 UT, early in the evening on the West Coast. West Coast locations are favored with closer distances, only around 6000 km when it is high in the sky. There's little possibility to see it below about 45 deg. altitude, I believe, because at lower altitudes, the phase angle is poor, you are looking mostly at the dark side of the satellite. But as it rises higher, it also is moving away from the Earth; the best chances for seeing it may be when it's about 60 - 70 deg. altitude as seen from western North America, around 4:45 - 4:55 UT. I don't know how bright it will be; it may be flashing. It's now spinning at 1 rev. per second, so any flashes from the sides would be rapid, every 1/8th second, so it may appear more continuous. I don't know of any successful attempts to see CONTOUR during OCM8, with some observations reaching almost 12th mag., but CONTOUR was more than 10,000 km away then. More about CONTOUR can be found here. ________________________________________________________________ Local predictions can be found below; you can also get local predictions at the Horizons Web site, or you can request predictions from me at dunham@erols.com (but I can only provide predictions sporadically during the next couple of days; it would be best if your request is received before about 3h U.T. of Aug. 9). The cities are listed approximately from west to east. In the predictions, the name of the location given in the header has a "9" preceding it, necessary because the name is used to create file names, and I needed to do that to ensure unique file names, as well as ones that could be FTP'ed to my Web site in one operation. *** IMPORTANT NOTE: - These predictions are probably not *** as accurate as those from the JPL Horizons site with link provided above; if at all possible, you should get your predictions from there rather than from below. Honolulu, HI Haleakala, HI Mauna Kea, HI Anchorage, AK Eureka, CA Vancouver, BC Eugene, OR Portland, OR San Francisco, CA Seattle, WA Aptos, CA (near Santa Cruz) Sacramento, CA Ellensburg, WA Bend, OR Reno, NV Fresno, CA Mt. Pinos, CA Los Angeles, CA Wrightwood, CA (Table Mtn. Obs.) Pullman, WA SanDiego, CA LasVegas, NV Calgary, AB Missoula, MT Edmonton, AB Idaho Falls, ID Phoenix, AZ Flagstaff, AZ Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico Tucson, AZ La Paz, Baja Cal. Sur, Mexico Las Cruces, NM Saskatoon, SK Denver, CO Albuquerque, NM Salt Lake City, UT Ft. Davis, TX (MacDonald Obs. Guadalajara, Mexico Rapid City, SD Lubbock, TX Monterrey, NL, Mexico Mexico City, DF, Mexico San Antonio, TX Austin, TX Oklahoma City, OK Wichita, KS Dallas, TX Omaha, NE Topeka, KS Houston, TX Kansas City, MO St. Paul, MN Galapagos Is., Equador St. Louis, MO New Orleans, LA Memphis, TN Madison, WI Milwaukee, WI Chicago, IL Urbana, IL Nashville, TN Indianapolis, IN East Lansing, MI Atlanta, GA Dayton, OH Detroit, MI Tampa, FL Gainesville, FL Berea, OH (west of Cleveland) Jacksonville, FL Columbia, SC Melbourne, FL Miami, FL Pittsburgh, PA Toronto, ON Chapel Hill, NC Buffalo, NY Rochester, NY Richmond, VA Washington, DC Dayton, MD Laurel, MD Beltsville, MD Ithaca, NY Norfolk, VA Ottawa, ON Philadelphia, PA Cranford, NJ New York, NY Montreal, PQ Boston, MA Halifax, NS The CONTOUR spacecraft itself is always in sunlight; it is cylindrical, about 1.7 meters high and across, covered mainly with solar cells. But it doesn't have large panels pointed towards the Earth like NEAR. Earth-centered J2000 equatorial coordinates, and orbital elements, of CONTOUR at the perigee of August 10 are given below for calculating local predictions (R.A. and Dec., and altitude and azimuth) for those who can use them. David Dunham, IOTA and CONTOUR Mission Design Team UTC Gregorian Date: 10 Aug 2002 04:21:29.7492 State Vector in Coordinate System: Earth Centered Mean J2000 Parameter Set Type: Cartesian X: -6446.5765422734357000 km Vx: -1.8883256115900584 km/sec Y: 709.2545654377504400 km Vy: -9.1715209127530244 km/sec Z: -1089.9951607671674000 km Vz: 5.2002911946970780 km/sec Parameter Set Type: Keplerian sma: 61367.97610186576600 km RAAN: 190.0538007947365 deg ecc: 0.8928360661750041 w: 341.15117963797 deg inc: 30.86522058870675 deg TA: 4.753759504387209e-007 deg _________________________________________________________________________ David Dunham, IOTA, e-mail dunham@erols.com, 2002 Aug. 8, 3h UT office e-mail david.dunham@jhuapl.edu Phone home 301-474-4722; office 240-228-5609; car 301-526-5590.