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Amateur Satellite
Tracking
Last update 01/10/08
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I did amateur Satellite Tracking for about 30 years, firstly for the
Radio and Space Research station at Slough,then Aston University in Birmingham
and finally for the RGO(Royal Greenwich Observatory) at Hurstmonceaux. They
would send me Data each week consisting of a number of Satellites of varying
priority, giving times of expected crossing, RA and Dec, Altitude and Azimuth,
and magnitude. You then set up the telescope to these settings and waited for it
to appear. When it did ,you then followed it across the sky until you found a
suitable star that it would pass over, or close to,then start your Stopwatch at
that instant. you would then stop the watch against a known Time signal.(I used
MSF Rugby 60kcs) After having jotted down the star pattern in my notebook and
repeated all this for other Satellites, I would then have to go indoors and
search through the Star Atlases and Star Catalogues until I found the actual
Star and noted its exact position. These Observations were sent each month to
the Research centres. The Aim was to try to achieve at least 1minute of
Arc in position and 0.1 seconds of time in accuracy The
Research station would then compare the position that the Satellite
should be at, and the observed position sent in, and
work out what caused the difference,EG.Gravity Gradient,Atmospheric
rotation,etc, etc.This is only a simplified explanation. I built the Elbow
Telescope out of some lenses and prisms that I picked up cheaply, also the MSF
radio receiver to which I added an electronic gadget which allowed the signal
itself to start or stop the stopwatch, thus eliminating the possible human error
when pressing the watch button.
The following article was printed in The South
Kent Gazette in May 1982.
KEEPING TRACK OF A
SATELLITEAS THE sun sinks over Dymchurch a
humble garden shed in the sleepy seaside village is trans formed into a
satellite tracking station.
Using home-made equipment amateur astronomer
Richard Badger collects scientific information from the shed he built in the
back garden of his bungalow in Queensway.
He tracks Satellites as they cross
the sky at 17,000 miles an hour and takes readings more accurate than data
collected by the US navy.
Along with other keen Amateurs scattered over the
globe, he has set up a station to help Aston University in Birmingham with its
research. The University sends lists of Satellites stating when and where they
will pass over Dymchurch.He plots their position and sends the results back to
Aston where mathematicians and astronomers use them to write a "life story" of
any one satellite. In ten years he has been spotting sputniks mr badger has
improved his equipment so that he can take timings accurate to one fiftieth of a
second .
He started with a pair of binoculars and a deckchair but has built a
telescope using a box of mixed lenses and prisms he bought for £2. Recently he
improved it by gluing 2 strands of a spiders web across the eyepiece, 20
thousandths of an inch apart so that he can plot the satellites more
accurately.He also built a time radio to pick up signals transmitted by an
atomic clock in Rugby which gives him Greenwhich Mean Time exactly.
When a
Satellite is due over Dymchurch he slides back the lid of the observation tower
on the shed and it becomes COSPAR station No2539. (Committee On Space
Research).
During the 5 to 10 seconds it passes across the viewfinder,he will
take an exact time and note down its co-ordinates.
The most time-consuming
part is plotting this position on complex Star charts. Mr Badger then sends his
readings to Aston University.
Years later when papers are written on the life
of a Satellite , he can find out how useful his information was. Once he
achieved his ambition when his tracking of one Satellite was 100% accurate.
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