Something fun moving across TASS

["Pittinger, Martin J." <PittiMJ1@central.SSD.JHUAPL.edu>]

Something fun to try,
You could determine a rough distance by measuring the separation between
outer streaks (Boeing 737-300 is 94' 9" or 737-900 is 112' 7" wing tip
to wing tip). Then there's the strobe on the bottom, flashing at a 1/sec
rate (most do) so you could almost calculate speed (737-300 approx.
speed is 495 mph & 737-900 approx. speed is 530 mph) w/ no head wind.
Finally with the angle of the streaks in a TASS image you could get a
rough direction. OK, it's not exact but it's still fun to try.

Happy hunting,

	----------
	From: 	Beser, Nicholas D.(Nick)
	Sent: 	Monday, January 05, 1998 5:05 PM
	To: 	Tom Droege
	Cc: 	tass@wwa.com; Stupendous Man
	Subject: 	Re: new additions to TASS home page



	Tom Droege wrote:

	> Michael,
	>
	> Very nice!!  There is even more data than you indicated.
Going from
	> 0-1 RA and -.2 to +.7 in Decl.  gives a nice diagonal track.
	>
	> >  I urge people to try this out: make a V-band chart of
	> >(0.0 < RA < 0.5) and (0.0 < Dec < 0.5),
	> >and look at chart: there's clearly an object which moves
through the
	> >field!   It turns out to take only a few minutes to move all
the
	> >way across a 3-degree swath, so I suspect that it's a
satellite
	> >of some kind.
	>
	> Huh!  Does this mean that Mike's program looked at the track
and found
	> many points???   Is this just one data field, or the
combination of a lot of
	> measurements from different locations??   How can you tell
that it only
	> took a few minutes to move all the way across the 3 degree
swath???
	> Seeems like all the measurements have one time stamp???  I
don't
	> understand.
	>
	> OK, I looked (by hand) at a couple of points on the track and
they both
	> came from  G1A_0745.  To hard to track them all down when a
computer
	> can do it.
	>
	> Hmmm!  If a track is turned into many points is this good or
bad?
	>
	> Tom

	I think if you are seeing a track it is likely an aircraft. (We
see several in
	one evening).
	I examined the original file (31t0745.621), and it shows three
parallel lines,
	typical of a aircraft.

	We talked about this when we discussed the data screening. (I
plotted out the
	output from star which included many stars generated from an
aircraft trail). I
	don't recall if we decided if it was good or bad.

	Nick