Predicting Visible Passes of ISSTahsin Çağrı Şişman Abstract: In this talk, first I give a brief introduction about satellite observations. Then, I discuss some orbital mechanics basics. With this background, the visible pass predictions of satellites are discussed for a given point on Earth. This involves finding the satellite state vector with the application of two-body problem in the presence of the gravitational orbital perturbations, and determining the relative positions of the satellite, the observation point, and the Sun to have line of sight analysis. To make visible pass predictions, a computer code is developed which uses an analytical approach based on the conserved quantities in the two-body problem. Finally, I discuss the relevance of this rather simple problem with the orbital perturbation and orbit determination applications. After this talk, you may start to observe ISS tomorrow (16th of Nov, Friday) morning at 06:06. |