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[patrickm]

Lucky us. In the middle of Chicago Astronomer Star Party at Adler, our fast friends in the sky will pass almost directly overhead!

8:30PM from the west northwest crossing nearly overhead toward southeast. VERY bright.

Post a pic if you can grab one. Binocs also are fun.

Enjoy and don't forget to wave.

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[patrickm]

Here's the ground track.

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[erikruud]

We saw it out here in Saint Charles. I tries to get it on video, but I haven't looked at the results yet.

[patrickm]

Looked great from Adler. I think pics were taken there, too. Looking forward to those.

[erikruud]

The video did not come out too well. I'll have to figure out which settings will work best for this kind of stuff, so I am ready next time.

For what it's worth the video is here You can see a faint fuzzy dot rising into the sky in the beginning of it. Then I lost it as I tried to zoom and deal with it passing overhead. Then I picked it up again, much brighter, in the last third of the video as it was setting.

[Paulie pchris00]

Thanks for the heads up. I didn't get any pics, but viewed it at low power (25mm EP) in my Dob. I don't know if it was because it came nearly straight overhead, but it was my best look at it ever. I alomst wish I had used higher power on it, but then it's so much harder to track. I definitely saw the solar arrays on either side. I've never been able to discern them at lower angle passes with my 25mm.

[patrickm]

Paulie,
COOL! I didn't know that you caught that. How awesome. I was so deep in set up panic at that point, I was pretty much oblivious...
Nice!