Comments | tirianmal: Very cool picture ... very bad geometry?

tirianmal

Very cool picture ... very bad geometry?

Mar 13, 2007 18:13

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/12mar_stereoeclipse.htm?list39638Read more... )

Comments 2

chenoameg March 14 2007, 01:33:14 UTC

"Mission controllers arranged the alignment with a small tweak to STEREO-B's orbit last December"

I think that sentence contains the missing mojo.

tirianmal March 14 2007, 04:19:37 UTC

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/where.shtml

Aha. So, it seems that Stereo B, which took the images is currently outside of Earth's orbit by about a million millions (ie 94 million miles from the sun.).

Hence, it was in line with the Sun and Moon, and not yet at its target location 4 million miles trailing the Earth.

Seems like they are getting the satellites in place via some interesting orbits.