I found the Ron Dantowitz article. Sky & Telescope August 1998 pg 54. The part I enjoyed had him talking about having recently posted some spy satellite pictures to the web. "Soon afterward I got a visit from some folks at the National Reconnaissance Office. I spent 5 hours showing them how my system works. They had timed their visit so that a classified satellite would be passing over Boston and could be used as a target. They didn't give me orbital elements, so I had to use my own database. After keying in the information, the museum's 12 inch reflector automatically locked onto the satellite within seconds and tracked it across the sky at 230x. It was one of the Lacrosse series and dead centered in the field. My guests were very surprised but they remained stoic!" And this was 9 years ago. The pictures accompanying that article and from his 1996 S&T article were great at the time and still look pretty good. But just have a look at what he was able to do earlier this year when ISS and Atlantis passed over: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070628.html Incredible! BTW, all of this talk of spy satellites got me doing a bit of checking and it looks like we in northern Utah will be treated to some pretty decent passes of the NOSS 2-1 cluster (3 satellites that travel in formation) next month. Same for Lacrosse 2, 3 & 5. And speaking of the Lacrosse series, I like the patch NRO issued in 2000 ( http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-083100a.html ) and their slogan "We own the night". Carpe Noctem! patrick