Posted on 02/14/2018 7:43:01 PM PST by BenLurkin
"Once footage of the car and Starman started to arrive and people wondered if it could be observed from Earth, there was just one thing in my mind: to find the answer to that question and if yes, to try take a picture — better yet, a video — of it," Andreo wrote on his website, DeepSkyColors.com.
To catch a view of the shiny car as it cruised off into space, Andreo packed up his telescopes and cameras, and drove to the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve in California, a semidark site just a short drive from his home in Sunnyvale.
Using an online ephemeris calculator provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Andreo was able to determine exactly where and when to locate the Roadster in the night sky. This is also how the Virtual Telescope Project and the Tenagra Observatory in Arizona were able to capture another video of the Roadster zooming through space on Feb. 8. (You can find NASA's data on the Roadster at ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi by selecting "target body" -143205.)
...
When I created the ephemeris from the JPL's website, I did not enter my coordinates! I went with the default, whatever that might be," he added. The default location setting is "Geocentric," or the center of the Earth.
"Since the Roadster is still fairly close to us, parallax is significant, meaning, different locations on Earth will see Starman at slightly different coordinates," Andreo said. "I quickly recalculate, get the new coordinates, go to my images, and thanks to the wide field captured by my telescopes... boom! There it was! Impossible to miss! It had been right there all along; I just never noticed!"
Moral of the story: When tracking objects in space, always remember to take into account where you are on Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Left hand turn signal still on?
Can’t tell. The batteries in the Tesla went dead several days ago.
This is a joke. Musk polluting the universe? Bleeding heart rabid liberals don’t care?
Great sleight of hand, executed just before an earnings report involving yet another big loss.
Did they ever stop to think how hard it is going to be to change a flat tire on that thing???
LOL, taking a leak might be hard too.
Because of his thread, I finally spent the last hour looking up videos and articles about the Falcon Heavy launch, Starman and his Roadster, and the landing of the two outer boosters. I couldn’t find video of the crash of the core booster. It’s really quite amazing stuff that SpaceX is doing. There is a great article out there with a side by side comparison of Falcon Heavy to Saturn V too - https://newatlas.com/falcon-heavy-saturn-v/53090/.
Stopped by the Moon to pick up Alice.
It's an electric car. : )
Actually, it had a solar panel roof which was supposed to charge the batteries, but then Elon had them fold up the top so the astronaut could be seen.
You mean no coal in outer space? Where is the electric plug?
Looks like it is tumbling. Driver must be drunk.
The last paragraph in your link is sad. We do not have the people or the tools to build another Saturn V. Terrible.
Quark will clean up Elon Musk’s pollution.
>>The last paragraph in your link is sad. We do not have the people or the tools to build another Saturn V. Terrible.
Yeah, time goes by and things change. I love the statistics on the Saturn V vs the Falcon Heavy in that article though. The next thing they are working on for space travel is called the “BFR”.
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