Seattle Astronomy: looking up for MAST (www.seattleastro.org)
Michael & (snip) -
Today I received a couple of reports from amateur observers who have seen MAST w/ binoculars, so my earlier statement about visibility is apparently incorrect.
-(snip, from tethers unlimited)
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(snip),
Thanks for your interest and I really appreciate your help! Comments below. I am blogging this message, and posting it, so that if other people are able to help, then they have the information too. And I am CCing this to Rob Hoyt, at www.tethers.com and he can give any other details you might need. good luck!
Mr. Michael Laine:
Mr. Laine:
First of all I would like to thank you very much for presenting at last night’s Seattle Astronomical Society meeting. I found your talk very interesting, even if it was science fiction from my youth.
I hope that you get the opportunity to build this thing because I’d love to ride it.
Thank you. Really, I love doing this, and it is great when I don’t have to give as much ‘background’ info. You might have noticed that I was speaking pretty fast, because there is a lot of ground to cover, in a short time. But it is really refreshing to talk to an audience that ‘gets it’, about why this thing matters. And yes, I expect a lot of people will want to ride on this thing. We have a ‘novelty item’ (that we are taking seriously), if you would like to start purchasing your ticket now. Our Lift Tickets are a great way to make an impression and show a commitment – and lock in a ‘someday’ price of $400/lb.
I had told you last night that if you could furnish the orbital elements for the satellite of interest I would be able to model it in an orrery package (Starry Night Pro Plus 6.04) and see what visibility it might have from the area.
Go here: http://www.tethers.com/MAST_Blog.html, and scroll down to April 25 entry. Then go here: http://www.heavens-above.com/ and look for this object: 31126. Then go outside, and look up. J If you find anything at all, please let Rob and I know right away. And better, email your various contacts and ask them to do the same thing. I don’t have $500 like that prize you guys were mentioning, but it would be a big help.
I need the NASA ‘two line’ orbitals and the reference plane (Earth Equatorial, etc) to do that. What ever I find I will communicate to the SAS community. Perhaps someone will see something.
Thanks for spreading the word, that helps a lot. I can’t give you the information you are asking for, but I am sure rob will respond and let you know. It’s his ‘bird’; I am just trying to facilitate figuring out what is going on/wrong out there. I don’t know how to use a telescope, but I do know how to network to people that do…. However, on that note, if you are able to find something, I would really like to look up at it… could you let me know, and I would love to see it. And if you have camera equipment, it would be amazing to have photos.
I’ll confess to being rather curious (I meant to ask last night) … how big is your operation here?
There are 14 of us. Mostly volunteers. I didn’t get into it that night (not hiding it, it just didn’t come up) we had a pretty big financial setback about a month ago. But we will be all right. In fact, I am doing an interview on www.thespaceshow.com this afternoon, to talk about that subject.
You probably had no way of knowing this but our audience was bigger than normal and I think many showed up to hear your talk.
No, I didn’t know that, and I am both thankful and flattered. I hope you got what you wanted out of it. I know I didn’t answer all the questions, but that is because we don’t know all the answers.
Take care. Mjl
Again thank you for last night.