Monday evening I was following NOSS 3-2 Rk (03-054B, 28096) in the northwest when there was a flash above it in the field of view. Soon there were more flashes. The unid object was moving VERY slowly. The brightest flashes were visible without binoculars; it was such a beautiful evening that might have been +4.0 magnitude. Its flash period was around 11 seconds but kind of irregular according to my clicks. In a little while it rapidly grew too faint to see. We assumed it was a Molniya. Next day correspondence and my Highfly magnitude file seemed to indicate pretty strongly that it was a Glonass: Cosmos 1651 (85-037B, 15698). Its range when observed was just a bit less than 20,000 km. In the magnitude file was this note: "p=11 20912 GR" -- Greg Roberts reported it as very impressive on 12 Sept 2002: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Sep-2002/0162.html I'm not sending a PPAS report because I think that we didn't get a rock-solid ID, but I'm pretty sure that it was that object. Mike and Fred and I were all at the usual site that evening, 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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