Satgen262 Satellite Spotter Part 10 by GM4IHJ 2 April 94 BID of this msg is SGEN262 Please use this BID if you retransmit the msg Visual Sighting of satellites can be a useful check on what they are and where they come from. You cannot of course see a satellite in daylight unless you employ a very powerful telescope, and very few satellites carry night lights. But, satellites and their massive solar panels do reflect sunlight. So if you catch them just after sunset or before dawn, when you on the ground are in the dark, you will see many satellites which are high enough above you from where they still see and reflect sunlight. The most obvious candidate for practising visual acquisition is the MIR Space station. It is a good naked eye object everytime it comes above elevation 15 degrees with respect to your station horizon , between 30 and 120 minutes after sunset at stations in the belt 50N to 50S latitude. So you may see two consecutive passes on some nights, 90 minutes apart. You do not see it from horizon to horizon. As it comes up out of the sunset it needs to get 10 or 15 degrees high to clear ground haze. Then you see it cross your sky only until it to loses the sun usually sometime before it drops down to your horizon. With Mir you can of course double check on it by monitoring 143.625 and 145.55 for its FM signals. There are at least 40 other big targets which light up like Mir , but only Shuttle sends radio signals, most of the rest are old and very dead rocket cases. However you can find other useful visual and radio transmitting sats, once you have got familiar with the visual tracking technique by following Mir. Mir is as bright as a magnitude 1 star . Most people with good eye sight can see stars down to magnitude 6 ( much dimmer ). The trick is to observe a satellite crossroads , one of those rgeions in the sky most satellites pass through. For temperate latitude observers the best "crossroads" lie at about 30 to 50 degrees elevation , due east or west of your station. Fixing your gaze say to the east you should see naked eye sats crossing your view at least one every ten minutes. Those going north are Russian , those going south are American . But if you turn and look west, the nationality/direction picture is reversed. Those going north are American , those going south are Russian ( Southern hemisphere observers please regverse these rules ). Most of the sats you see are Navsats transmitting between 149-150 and 399-400MHz. So you should hear many of them as well as see them . A good pair of binoculars helps track them firmly, but even old visually disadvantaged GM4IHJ can see most of them naked eyed ( around magnitude 3 or 4 ). The further towards the pole you are the better things get . IHJ at 56N can use the Northern summer Midnight sun when it is over the Pacific Ocean to illuminate satellites overhead Scotland on clear summer nights. Some of the old rocket bodies are quite unstable so they twinkle slowly like bright stars as they roll around with respect to the Sun. But be careful you do not confuse them with aircraft. Aircraft use coloured lights which flash regularly and quickly. So there is lots of fun particularly on a clear warm night, particularly if you get the sharp eyed local kids to spot for you 73 de GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN PS VK stations (accidentally ?) returning SP dupes of sgens to GM4IHJ. Please stop this misuse of the amateur packet network. It makes no sense.