EXOSAT RAW LE Orbit FITS File

This file contains the orbital position information every 8 seconds (corresponding to the telemetry rate of the Housekeeping data) throughout the course of the observation set within this directory. The input to the routine which extracts the orbit data from the FOT uses the modified julian date and two flags which tell the routine which date to give coordinates for (epoch or 1950) and whether velocity data is needed.

This file was concatenated from the orbital data from each observation. The number of rows contributed by each observation is listed in the HISTORY keywords.

This FITS file contains one binary table extension.

Column Description:

• TIME : Ground station time (s)
• SHFTIME : Time since Jan 1, 1980 00:00:00 (s)
• SAT_X_DATE : X Coordinate of S/C at epoch (km)
• SAT_Y_DATE : Y Coordinate of S/C at epoch (km)
• SAT_Z_DATE : Z Coordinate of S/C at epoch (km)
• SAT_VX_DATE : X-Velocity of S/C at epoch (km/s)
• SAT_VY_DATE : Y-Velocity of S/C at epoch (km/s)
• SAT_VZ_DATE : Z-Velocity of S/C at epoch (km/s)
• SUN_X_SAT : X Coordinate of Sun wrt S/C (km)
• SUN_Y_SAT : Y Coordinate of Sun wrt S/C (km)
• SUN_Z_SAT : Z Coordinate of Sun wrt S/C (km)
• SUN_X_EARTH : X Coordinate of Sun wrt Earth (km)
• SUN_Y_EARTH : Y Coordinate of Sun wrt Earth (km)
• SUN_Z_EARTH : Z Coordinate of Sun wrt Earth (km)
• SAT_X_1950 : X Coordinate of S/C at epoch 1950 (km)
• SAT_Y_1950 : Y Coordinate of S/C at epoch 1950 (km)
• SAT_Z_1950 : Z Coordinate of S/C at epoch 1950 (km)
• SAT_VX_1950 : X-Velocity of S/C at epoch 1950 (km/s)
• SAT_VY_1950 : Y-Velocity of S/C at epoch 1950 (km/s)
• SAT_VZ_1950 : Z-Velocity of S/C at epoch 1950 (km/s)