UNID 20.04./20:31 UTC
Marco Hahn (Marco_Hahn@sl.maus.de)
Wed, 21 Apr 1999 17:52:00 +0200
Yesterday evening I observed two satellites flying almost in parallel and both
disappearing into shadow around 20:31 UTC (+/- 1 minute) near altitude 80
degrees, azimut 45 degrees. My location was 54.456N, 9.622E. The two satellites
were separated by about 10 degrees alongtrack, the tracks by about 3 degrees.
They moved from south to north (i. e. right to left as seen by me), maybe a
slight change in altitude was occurring over the 30-40 degree part of the track
that I saw. The upper satellite was about 4th magnitude, the lower one about
2nd magnitude.
One possible match according to the new_elem from April 15th could be:
ERS 2
1 23560U 95021 A 99104.20866280 .00000226 00000-0 10000-3 0 6977
2 23560 98.5489 179.4510 0000936 67.8084 292.3205 14.32247536208155
however, it is about 2 minutes late and comes out of the shadow instead of
disappearing into it. The track fits, though.
Hej då, Marco