(meteorobs) DELTA ROCKET & FUEL DUMP TO BE VISIBLE TONIGHT

[Skywayinc at aol.com]

This is a little off-topic, but should be of interest to those of you
who will be out late doing some meteor observing late Saturday night/early  
Sunday 
morning . . . 
 
At 8:50 p.m. EST tonight (Saturday) a Delta-4 Heavy Rocket was  launched 
from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The payload for this mission is the final 
Defense Support Program missile warning satellite (DSP-23). 
 
Of potential interest to North American observers who plan to out later  
tonight is 
a circularization burn for the DPS-23 that is scheduled for 3:01 a.m.  EST, 
followed 
by a fuel dump at 3:21 a.m. EST.
 
Because both the Centaur rocket burn (duration: 3 minutes) and the residual  
fuel and oxidizer dump after payload separation will occur at an altitude of  
22,000-miles, both should be visible as two naked-eye "comets" of roughly  1st 
or 2nd-magnitude from the entire Western Hemisphere, since this will  occur
over the equator at longitude 90 west.
 
Places in the Eastern US should look roughly one-third-to-one-half up in  the 
south-southwest sky.  In the Central US (1:50 to 2:10 a.m. CST) a  similar 
distance up but due south, while in the Western US, (12:50 to 1:10 a.m.  MST or 
11:50 p.m. to 12:10 a.m. PST), look more toward the  south-southeast.
 
For example: from the Tri-State NYC area, the rocket burn and fuel dump  
should appear at an altitude of approximately 40-degrees and an azimuth of  
204-degrees.  If plotted on a star atlas, this position would correspond to  RA 05h 
23.4m, Dec. -6.3-degrees.  That would place roughly to the west  (right) of 
M42,
the Great Orion Nebula. 

For a DSP-22 launch that occurred in December 2004, the prediction  was also 
for orbital circulization
over longitude 90-degrees west, but the  observations indicated it actually 
occurred closer to about 96-degrees  west.  So there is still a bit of 
uncertainty in these  predictions.

-- joe rao



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