26 July 2008

Observing Location	PKR
Observational Period	0945-1000 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Clear Temperature 78° F Wind Calm Humidity Moderate Barometric Pressure 30.05" Hg Falling Feels Like Warm It feels warm out and hot when you are in the sun. The sky could be bluer. Transparency Good. Seeing I
Instruments	Brunton 8x21 compact binocular w/Welco gold shade 14 welder's filter - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Sunspots Constellation Cnc Category Solar Time yyyymmdd.hhmm 20080726.0945 EDT Comments Distance Light Time 1.02 AU 8m 27s Angular Size 31' 32.28" Altitude 43.1° Heliographic Latitude (B0) 5.39° Heliographic Longitude (L0) 100.79° Parallactic Angle (P) 8.74° Carrington rotation number (CR) 2072 Nothing Seen There is nothing showing on the SOHO image. Active Region Explorer is showing a pore where 1000 used to be that is about to rotate to the back side of the Sun.   Groups Spots R North 0 0 0 South 0 0 0 Total 0 0 0 R = (Groups * 10) + Spots)

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Observing Location	South Street Seaport area; Peck slip, Pears/Water Sts Lat.: 40° 42' 30.86" Long.: -74° 0' 7.61"
Observational Period	2315-2330 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Overcast ? Cloud Cover Temperature 75° Wind Light Breeze Humidity Moderate Barometric Pressure 29.87" Hg Steady Feels Like Mild The sky looks clear but I can only see one star which I am assuming is Jupiter. Transparency Poor Seeing
Instruments	Naked-eye - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

I had hoped to see the ISS and a Mag. -7 Iridium flare tonight after the chantey sing but my environment was working against me. I don’t think my skies were clear as the weather history for Central Park is reporting. And my horizon was too high to see the ISS and only allowed a small window between buildings for the Iridium. And it looks like I jumbled my listing of the data for the Iridium and was looking 2° west of where the flare should have been. With an open horizon that would not have been a problem but in this case the flare might have occurred behind the left hand building forming the margin of my window.

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Backing out some old email I came across an article at Spaceflight Now that says NASA wants to modify the launch dates of the next two shuttle missions. They had originally asked that each mission be moved forward by six days but have modified that request to three days.

Mission	Initial Date	1st Modification	Current Modification
STS-125 HST Servicing Mission	8Oct08 0130 EDT	2Oct08	5Oct08 0302:18 EDT
STS-125	10Nov08 2128 EST	Nov08	7Nov08 2239 EST

Action on the requested launch target modifications is not expected until 12Nov08.

If the modified modifications are accepted the mission profiles would be as follows:

STS-125

5Oct05

0302:18 EDT

Launch

7Oct08

0128 EDT

HST graple

2017 EDT

First of 5 daily spacewalks

12Oct08

2113 EDT

HST release

16Oct08

0004 EDT

KSC landing

STS-126

7Nov08

2239 EST

Launch

~2247 EST

MECO
NYC flyby

9Nov08

2011 EST

Docking to ISS

22Aug08

1702 EST

KSC landing

On the HST mission it is going to take them two days longer to get home that it will take them to get there. I am assuming that those two days will be spent in the neighborhood while initial tests are done in case something didn't go right.

I had assumed that it would be possible to see STS-125 as it flew past NYC, but now realize that the trajectory to to HST isn't the same as that to ISS and it might not fly past NYC.

Spaceflight Now article