Earlier today I found ETS 6 (94-056A, 23230, a.k.a. Kiku 6) flashing about +5.5 at about 2:03:30 UTC in western Virgo. It slowly brightened. Flashes visible without binoculars (with it not all that far away from Moon) lasted from about 2:12 to 2:20 UTC (roughly RA 12:20 to 13:00, Dec +2.5 -- northernmost apex). The brightest ones seemed to me to be about +1.5 -- definitely brighter than Polaris, although with the moonlight I'm not completely certain. Its range at the time was 9,000 miles (14,400 km) plus or minus. I kept watching it as an entire page of Quicksat predictions went unobserved (by me). The last flash I recorded was about +5.5 at about 2:24:47.5, when I let it go after over 20 minutes. This was from the BCRC site. The next opportunity will be Sunday evening (April 16 local time, April 17 UTC). My plan to observe 90007 flashes earlier tonight turned out to be delayed until too late due to the second pass of USA 129 (96-072A, 24680), which produced an exceptionally long, bright flare (+2.5 at a range of over 1,100 miles/1,760 km) quite low in the north-northwest. Wednesday evening, from the Ney Museum site, 90007's flash episode (that I was able to see) was from 4:27:24 to 4:35:07. Oh, earlier tonight the leader of NOSS 2-2 (91-076E, 21809) was visible without binoculars for much of the pass, while the two followers (91-076C, 21799 and 91-76D, 21808) were a lot fainter. Then during the pass four minutes later of the NOSS 3-3 pair (05-004A, 28537 and 05-004C, 28541), both of them flared to +1 magnitude and were visible without binoculars for much of the pass. Both of these sets of satellites were northbound, from southwest to north. Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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