| About ROSAT |
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ROSAT was placed into a circular low earth orbit with an initial altitude
of 580 km (see Table 7.1 
for the nominal orbit parameters).
As seen from ROSAT, Earth subtends a cone with an
opening half angle of 
; most targets will therefore
be occulted for
part of the orbit and observations will have to be broken into smaller
segments which will be interleaved with observations of other targets.
Hence the resulting data stream for a particular target will in general
show large data gaps.
| Altitude | 580 km |
| Inclination |  |
| Orbital period | 96 minutes |
| Precession period | 66 days |
No earth blockage occurs for targets in directions perpendicular to the instantaneous orbit plane (which changes due to precession); they are located in a so-called continuous viewing zone. Attempts will be made to schedule targets in continuous viewing zones whenever feasible since such targets can be observed with essentially no loss in viewing time other than losses due to the radiation belts and SAA.