Hubble Space Telescope passes these days

[starfinder]

I just saw the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) pass quite high overhead, at around 8:18pm today.

Had just surfed onto the Heavens-above.com website at 8:10pm, and HST was due to pass in a few minutes!

It was very bright and easy to spot with the naked eye, even though it was very cloudy. I also viewed it though a 10x binoculars.

I would say that at one point, it flared to be brighter than Venus. Most of the time, it was brighter than nearby first magnitude Capella. Therefore, the prediction of magnitude 1.7 on the website for HST is really underestimating it, at least for the pass just now.

I watched the pass for about 2 minutes. It then suddenly vanished, due to it dropping into the Earth's shadow.

HST will be passing over the Singapore/southern Peninsula Malaysia region and thus visible for the next several days, in the morning around 6.30am and/or in the evening around 8.15pm.

Check here for the details for Singapore:

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummar ... atid=20580

Note that the sky may be already a bit too bright for the morning passes at 6.30am.

Anyone else who sees HST, post your observation here!


(Note: there won't be any Int'l Space Station passes over Singapore in the next 10 days.
Talking about which, I wonder what kind of views of Comet McNaught the astro-Naughts and cosmo-Naughts up there have of McNaught. ha!)

[ykchia]

Hi :

Yes, HST is known to flare brightly, the orientation however is not possible to be predicted in advance unlike iridium sats. Tumblings sats do exhibit flashing patterns..

Also someone was asking about telescope controlling and i was about to upload reply but the thread was killed... so i repost here.

software for sat tracking.

http://www.heavenscape.com/index.html the two line elements TLEs can be obtained from various sources. I believe with GPS, latest fresh TLEs, video ccd and plenty of patience and luck satellite imaging can be rewarding to the diehard.

but you can get decent images of ISS details by manual tracking too - John Locker told me he guides manually on a Meade SCT using the cross-wire of the finder while a ToUCam at prime focus...on ISS

rgds
yK