by Bob Jardine
"Let me see", I asked. A small dim satellite was moving slowly out of... Until later when Bob Jardine said another fellow (Rich N?) had been publicly showing M11 and had seen them.
It was Peter Natscher that first showed them to me, maybe 30-60 minutes before that. We also both speculated that they were geosynchronous satellites, but forgot to suggest turning off tracking at that time. So when Dan mentioned them, I had already had some (subconscious) time to come up with the proposal to kill the tracking.
It was a very cool view. At first, I only saw the little points of light "leaving" the core of M11 and leaving the field of view, so it was like stars that were getting bored hanging out in the center and decided to go elsewhere. It was only much later that I saw one enter the field.
I scratched my head a little while about why I had never seen these before, and why now in M11 (which isn't at Dec 0). Then I decided that they were close enough that Parallax was the answer. I wandered down to see Peter McKone, and we did a "middle-of-the-night" (that's sort of like "back-of-the-envelope") proof that the Dec was about right based on our latitude at Shingletown.
Thanks for following up, Dan.
And, by the way, this answers Stacy's question, at least for me -- the most unforgettable view I had at SSP was M11 in Peter's 20" ZOC Starmaster with the little stars getting bored and leaving, one at a time, or in groups of two or three, all in close parallel rows.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 25, 2004 10:30:06 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 02, 2005 09:04:02 PT