Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!snowdog
From: snowdog@athena.mit.edu (Richard the Nerd)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Atlantis sightings tonight
Message-ID: <8311@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 88 07:27:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: snowdog@athena.mit.edu (Richard the Nerd)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Keywords:


Despite worsening pass conditions as Atlantis exits the evening 
visibility window, we made sightings of Atlantis again tonight.
The Lacrosse radar satellite is still station-keeping with
Atlantis (as of 2300 UTC on the fourth of December).  The two
were viewed on a low elevation pass and were of comparable
brightness (about mag. +4), so it was hard to tell which was
which.  They were about 4 seconds apart.

New elements were computed, and this set fits all the sightings
made up to date best.  Tonight it predicted a pass about 30 seconds
late compared to what was actually observed around 2308 UTC Dec. 4.

Object:       STS-27
Epoch:        88337.666018
ndot/2:       0.0001 
n2dot/6:      0.0
bstar:        0.3e-3
Inclination:  57.0 deg
RA of node:   189.2 deg
Eccentricity: 0.0
Arg. Perigee: 0.0
Mean Anomaly: 0.0
Mean Motion:  15.39
Rev:          1

This should give pretty good predictions for tomorrow.

Good luck!

-Rich

PS there was a mailer crash here tonight - any mail to me that was
   not replied to should be resent.  (sorry, not my fault ;-)