Oleg Zabluda's blog: May 22, 2012

Oleg Zabluda's blog

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Partial Solar eclipse through 13.7 m radio telescope at a frequency of 37 GHz in Helsinki, on 4.1.2011.
Partial Solar eclipse through 13.7 m radio telescope at a frequency of 37 GHz in Helsinki, on 4.1.2011. They don't have many sunny days.

http://www.metsahovi.fi/en/sun/eclipse_2011/MRO_eclipse_2011-01-04.gif
http://www.metsahovi.fi/en/sun/pics/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mets%C3%A4hovi_Radio_Observatory
http://www.metsahovi.fi/en/sun/eclipse_2011/MRO_eclipse_2011-01-04.gif

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

Bankers Gone Wild at New York Athletic Club
Bankers Gone Wild at New York Athletic Club
"""
Young people, old people, girls, members, nonmembers, it was a nondiscriminatory ragematch. The initial fight seemed to have commenced over a woman, Tables were overturned to create a “lion’s pit” for the battle. ... The brawl then expanded from the booths to the bar... somebody knocked the guy's girlfriend over and this kid laid one dude right out. So now the fight expanded to three groups, three wolfpacks. Girl got knocked over again ...Second stoppage occurred after a good five minutes when Luis the bartender joined forces to come in and stop it. BIG MISTAKE , Luis fell like a bag of sand.... Then some pudgy kid comes out of nowhere, wasn't even involved, and connected straight into a much bigger kids with a blow to the head, who hits a table, broken everything on the ground. ... 10 cops were arresting all of them.
"""
new york athletic club

http://wallstreetjackass.typepad.com/raptureready/2012/04/ny-athletic-club-fight-.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/brawl-sheds-an-unwelcome-light-on-a-tony-athletic-club/
http://dealbreaker.com/2012/05/broker-involved-in-unsanctioned-wolfpack-ragematch-at-new-york-athletic-club-will-not-be-getting-off/
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/brawl-sheds-an-unwelcome-light-on-a-tony-athletic-club/

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

First attempt to launch Falcon 9 was made and aborted at 1:45:18 am PDT Sun May 20, 2012.
First attempt to launch Falcon 9 was made and aborted at 1:45:18 am PDT Sun May 20, 2012. Second attempt, was successful 2 days later, Tue May 22, at 12:44:38 am PDT.

Why was it 10 min 40 sec earlier in the day?

ISS orbit precesses by ~5 degrees per day (making complete circle in ~70 days), due to gravitational attraction of Earth's equatorial bulge, taking the launch side (24*60*5)/360=20 min less time to get under the orbit.

Also, on Earth, we keep time relative to Sun, not stars, making sidereal day (24*60)/365 ~= 4 min shorter then solar day. So, it takes the launch side 4 min less time to get under the orbit

Net result is 20+4=24 min per day of time advance.

That's exactly how Shuttle launches used to be scheduled. It would accumulate 48 min in 2 days.

Why Falcon 9/Dragon accumulated only 10:40 min in 2 days, I can't easily calculate. Must have something to do with Dragon's orbit precessing faster then ISS (because it has a 50km lower orbit), before the docking on Friday.

It is clearer why it was launched 2 days later. ISS orbit is 92.5 min. So in 24 hours it makes (24*60)/92.5=15.56 orbits, i.e. almost exactly out-of-phase on the opposite side of the orbit. So they had to wait another day to get it back in phase.

http://www.spaceflight101.com/dragon-c2-mission-updates.html
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=4392.425
http://www.spaceflight101.com/dragon-c2-mission-updates.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

Solar eclipse from Hinode (Sunrise) spacecraft, a Japan-NASA solar observing satellite in a low-Earth 400 mi...
Solar eclipse from Hinode (Sunrise) spacecraft, a Japan-NASA solar observing satellite in a low-Earth 400 mi sun-synchronous polar orbit.

As was predicted by me, 400 mi is nowhere near enough to get into totality
https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/fSsHaYmadHG
especially since the orbit doesn't even get it much closer to the Sun, being almost perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line :-)

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/eclipse_120520.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/eclipse_120520.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

Astronaut and blogger Don Pettit on ISS did not get into the path of the solar eclipse, so the best he could do is...
Astronaut and blogger Don Pettit on ISS did not get into the path of the solar eclipse, so the best he could do is to photo/video the lucky people in the shadow on the ground. You can see that ISS is moving much faster (~8 km/s) then the Moon (1 km/s).

The eclipse lasted 3.5 hours, during which time ISS did 2.5 orbits, but in the first approximation ISS orbit stays fixed with respect to stars, so it didn't help.

http://www.space.com/15815-solar-eclipse-moon-shadow-pictures-space.html

See also:
https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/fSsHaYmadHG
https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/5vHcGvoLX6c
http://www.space.com/15815-solar-eclipse-moon-shadow-pictures-space.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

International Space Station (ISS) solar transit during the partial solar eclipse, taken from the area of Muscat in...
International Space Station (ISS) solar transit during the partial solar eclipse, taken from the area of Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman on January 4th 2011 at 9:09 UT.

Transit duration: 0.86s. ISS is 510 km away, 0.1 km across, the Moon is 385,000 km away (750x farther), 3500 km across. The Sun is 150,000,000 km away (300,000x farther), 1,400,000 km across. If the center of the Sun was placed at Earth, it would extend 2x farther than the Moon.

ISS projection on the Sun is 0.108*150,000,000/510=30,000 km across (2.5x diameter of the Earth). From this, you can gauge the size of the sunspot it is passing.

Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor on EM-10 mount, Canon 5D mark II. 1/5000s exposure at 100 iso.
Transit forecast calculated by http://www.calsky.com/
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/eclipse110104_solar_transit.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/04/insanely-awesome-solar-eclipse-picture/
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/eclipse110104_solar_transit.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

International Space Station (ISS) transits the Moon, taken from Avranches (Normandy, France) a few hours before the...
International Space Station (ISS) transits the Moon, taken from Avranches (Normandy, France) a few hours before the eclipse, on December 20th, 2010 at 21:34 UT.

Transit duration: 0.55s. ISS distance to observer: 424 km. Speed in orbit: 7.5 km/s. ISS is 100m across, the Moon is 385,000 km (900x farther), 3500 km across, and goes at 1 km/s. Projection of ISS on the Moon is 0.108*900=100 km across. This helps you gauge the size of lunar features.

Meade 10" ACF on Takahashi EM400, Canon 5D mark II. 1/2000s exposure at 1600 iso.

Transit forecast calculated by http://www.calsky.com/
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/eclipse101221_lunar_transit.html
http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/eclipse101221_lunar_transit.html

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

SpaceX launch Falcon 9 successful. Dragon solar arrays deployed. Orbit is correct. T+15 min.

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