MIR Observations

 

At the beginning of January 2001 we were reading about the imminent demise of the MIR space station and, inspired by pictures from the Boston observatory taken in 1995, set ourselves the goal of obtaining a photograph of MIR before it was brought down from orbit. This page shows our results.

Observation location: Altrincham, near Manchester UK (53.4° N  2.4° W)

Range when this frame captured (closest approach) = 317 km
Elevation:  53°    Azimuth: 181°
Altitude:    254 km over Gloucester, UK
Orbital velocity: 26,000 km/hr

Frame orientation: as viewed by naked eye, MIR transiting from right to left
Image processing: Maximum Entropy Deconvolution
Image Resolution: MIR x-axis (Progress, Kvant & core module) overall length 30m = approx 20 arcseconds.

MIR configuration: Progress module docked on X+ axis, station unmanned i.e. no Soyuz craft docked on X- axis.

Click on the thumbnail image for a full page diagram of MIR in the same orientation as our picture.

For more details follow these links :-

Image Analysis Image Processing MIR Diagram

Links to related sites:-

bulletOther MIR photographs from Earth
bulletMIR & ISS Photos Tobias Lindemann & Josef Huber
bulletMIR & shuttle 1995 Ron Dantowitz
bullet1998 photographs of MIR from orbit
bulletSTS-91
bulletSattracker home page (Brent Boshart)
bulletTardis 2000 time sync home page
bulletMike Mcants TLE keplarian elements page
bulletMeade telescopes
bulletOther useful satellite related pages
bulletHeavens Above satellite pass predicitions
bulletVisual Satellite Observers home page
 


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Page content ©2001-2007 Mike Tyrrell