CapeTown SA - Johannesburg SA - Site 2
Posted by: 
TeamTGF
S 26° 07.976 E 027° 55.372
35J E 592256 N 7109267
Bear&Fox and TeamTGF Sighted the ISS during a pass on 31 May 07
Waymark Code: WM1MGW
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Date Posted: 06/02/2007
Views: 124
Thanks to Bear&Fox and all the other South African Geocachers that
helped us out with this Waymark.
The ISS is by far our favorite satellite, we watched the first launch and
have seen it hundreds of times since then. On the 31 May 2007 we did something
completely new and collaborated with a caching team, Bear&Fox, in the
Western Cape to see the ISS on one of its passes. In fact we would have seen the
ISS simultaneously for roughly a minute too.
The ISS passed Capetown at approx 18H51:30 and passed us in Johannesburg,
over 1000km away, 3 minutes later at 18H54:29, a distance that takes an airliner
well over an hour to accomplish.
This is a 4 second exposure of the ISS moving through the
clouds on the 31st
Some interesting stats from the pass are:
The ISS reached 10º at 18H49:38 at an Azimuth of 228° - Range = 2 127km
The ISS reached 47º (It's max alt) at 18H54:29 at an Azimuth of 321º, its
magnitude was supposed to be -1.0, but it gave a little flare of about a -3 for
two seconds before returning to its -1 magnitude. - Range =
455km
The ISS entered the Earths shadow at an Azimuth of 345º at 18H54:57 - Range =
504km
The total distance that the ISS covered was 1246.14km in a total time of just
under three minutes.