After a visit to the Heavens-Above website - the best site for DIY online satellite predictions - I noticed a prediction for the brightest satellite "colliding" with the brightest star, visible from my home on 25 February 2000 at 20H01:50 on a near overhead pass!
A 20° field of view of this event was predicted as follows:
| Since the above image suggested Mir passing very close to Sirius, I decided to try and capture this on video, viewed through my 9" astronomical telescope. To try and get as large a field as possible in order to hopefully capture enough frames to grab afterwards, I used the largest focal length eyepiece I have and only enough camera zoom to compensate for most of the vignetting.
I was hardly set up by the time of the pass as Mir arrived dead on time. I gave the telescope a final nudge to try and centre on Sirius, shortly before Mir shot through the field. Inspecting the footage afterwards, revealed that about a dozen frames had captured the pass with the two objects "hitting" each other practically dead on, exactly as predicted. Unfortunately the telescope was not perfectly centred on Sirius. I Snapped a couple of the frames to assemble this event into the animated GIF on the right here (slowed down quite a bit compared to the real event). Notice how Mir keeps brightening as it moved towards a more favourable phase angle. Visually, this pass was equally impressive - one almost felt like holding one's breath at the anticipated "crash" as Mir seemed to race uncontrollably, straight at Sirius! |
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