Space Weather News for Sept. 20, 2010
http://spaceweather.com

JUPITER AT ITS BEST: Tonight, Sept. 20-21, Earth and Jupiter converge for their closest encounter in decades. The giant planet will soar across the sky at midnight, outshining everything except the Moon itself.  Although big, bright Jupiter will remain close to Earth for weeks to come, tonight is the closest of all.  Check http://spaceweather.com for images and more information.

SPACE STATION RADAR ECHO: Over the weekend, the International  Space Station flew through the radar beam of the US Air Force Space Surveillance System in Texas.  The echo was strong enough to be heard by amateur radio operators across the southern USA.  A sample echo is highlighted on today's edition of http://spaceweather.com .

SPACE WEATHER ALERTS:  With the coming of northern autumn, aurora season is underway. Would you like a call when geomagnetic storms erupt at your latitude?  Sign up for Space Weather Phone: http://spaceweatherphone.com

So it wasn't my imagination when i thought Jupiter looked brighter than usual the other night. I found myself double checking that Venus was still in the west where it ought to be!

Its amazing sometimes how bright objects can be. There are also a lot of highly visible satellites and objects. There is a group of objects called visible.txt full of about 100 of the sky's most visible objects.

We generate these TLEs each hour and put them on our three sites.

These days there are so many tracking programs for your PC, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. I even have one on my iPhone!

They not only show you on the screen, but give you pass predictions, so you know what time, what direction and elevation as well as the path. Its now like shooting fish in a barrel!

In the old days they were DOS programs only (pre Windows days), not to mention these programs did not take kindly to the TLEs. They had to be de-osculated and redone at the ascending node of the orbit (and believe me that was a pain).

These days I have written scripts and the server does everything for me. Not only logs into Space Command, gets all the data, sorts them into groups, stores them on the sites, even emails out on lists at the required intervals.

You would think this gives me more leisure time - well I thought so but sadly not