On 7 januari 1999 11:22, Ed Cannon wrote: >... >Now, has anyone in the southern hemisphere seen anything >recently from SPOT 3 (22823, 93-61A)? A few months ago on >most passes over here it did great flashes, some of them >being some of the brightest I've seen -- rivals of good >Iridium flares in magnitude. The flashes were seen as it ... Well, I'm not in the southern hemisphere, and it's not January, but I accidentally found it flashing wildly and irregularly. Average period 3.5 seconds, but some intervals around 2 sec. Best flash about -3m at 19:24:24 UT, next good one (+0m?) at 19:24:40 Spot 3 4.7 1.8 1.8 6.0 d 1 22823U 93061A 99102.13589910 -.00000043 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09441 2 22823 098.6445 169.6933 0014589 324.1042 035.9152 14.17164048287003 Quite a lot of clouds, so I missed USA 129, Landsat 7+UNK, NOSS SSU... But USA 86 flared through thin clouds to mag +1 at 19:45:27 UT, above right from Capella, roughly where I saw a similar flare on Apr.14, but the -3m flare above theta Aur was not repeated today. Clouds also ruined my orbit 1 try for Landsat 7. I got Ron's launch confirmation before going out, but only Cassiopeia, where it was to descend, was occasionally visible. -- bjorn@tt-tech.se (office) b_gimle@algonet.se (home) -- -- http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle -- -- COSPAR 5918, 59.298 N, 18.102 E, 55 m -- -- SeeSat-L / Visual Satellite Observer Home Page found at -- -- http://www.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html --