On 6 Nov 2008 at 18:01, Hilton Meyer wrote:
Hi Steve and Jim, I well remember seeing Sputnik pass over several times and listening to the beep, beep , beep from the beacon, which from memory was on around 20MHz. Two ham friends and I sat on my shack roof to observe the passes, here in Napier, New Zealand. 73 Hilton ZL2MN
AO 51 is about 25 cm on a side. That is about the size of a sack of groceries. I do not know the exact height of AO 51 but I know it is higher than the ISS (200 miles). I think AO 51 is about 250 to 300 miles up.
I believe it is impossible to get a visual sighting of something that small at that height. There are thousands of objects in orbit around our earth. A bag of groceries at 300 miles up would take more seeing ability than a human set of eyes can provide.
Jim W9VNE
I dust off STSPLUS and i remember this program give the pass where the satellite is visible. It works very well with ISS and the shuttle The magnitute of AO-51 is the key here try STSPLUS il will give you the time and the orbits where AO-51 is visible. Again the V visible mean the sun is illuminating the satellite. but this does not confirm that the satellite is really visible. . It works for ISS but i think not for AO-51. At least the you will not have to watch each and every pass to get the right one.
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Luc Leblanc VE2DWE Skype VE2DWE www.qsl.net/ve2dwe WAC BASIC CW PHONE SATELLITE