Re: Unidentified Bright Flaring Satellite
Stephmon@aol.com
Tue, 3 Aug 1999 03:02:54 EDT
As it happens, I was looking for something to test a few of Satellite
Hunting's international "comma as decimal" functionality issues. I ran
Mccants.tle from 7/30/99 with a 'Specify Window' from 5:10 to 5:30am and came
up with...
Prediction Date Local Time Satellite Name Sat.# Elev. Azimuth Mag
1999 Aug 1 [Sun] 5:17:52 AM ROCSAT 1 25616 20° 278° [W] 5.7
1999 Aug 1 [Sun] 5:21:09 AM ROCSAT 1 25616 83° 189° [S] 3.9
1999 Aug 1 [Sun] 5:24:25 AM ROCSAT 1 25616 20° 106° [E] 5.7
ROCSat 1999-002A was launched by Taiwan (Republic Of China). It carries space
physics, communications and oceanographic experiments.
International users: Watch for an announcement this weekend. I've got some
testing to finish, but it looks as if Satellite Hunting is finally, completly
compatible with the comma as decimal symbol, under Regional Settings.
Regards,
Stephen
In a message dated 8/1/99 11:23:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
jrburca@worldnet.att.net writes:
<< It didn't look as if it would so I rushed in to look at the clock
which read 5:22:__ AM PDT (12:22 UTC). From reconstucting, travelling
west-to-east, my guess is that it had culminated close to due south
(Az.170-190), El. 60-70 perhaps at 12:20:30-12:22:00 UTC 01 Aug. 1999 or
close to that, previous to my initially acquiring it.
I downloaded mccants.tle from Mike McCants' site. Using Rob Matson's SkyMap
as a search filter, no likely candidates came up. Then I downloaded
alldat.tle (alldat.zip) and got the same result with the search. The only
ones that came up in the search were Iridium 56 (too late) and Cosmos 1842
both going on tracks perpindicular to the track to my unknown so no near
matches at all.
So I am stumped and wonder if anybody can identify it or if perhaps I've
seen an uncataloged satellite.
-- Jake Rees >>