Thanks to Mike McCants, the last two nights I've been able to see the USA 136 Centaur Rk (97-068B, 25035) with my 10x50s. Mike measured its tumble period at 1.21 seconds. The brightest maxima may have been +6.0, more or less. It's running about 35 minutes or so late on the latest released elements (that I have at the moment): USA 136 Cent r 8.6 3.0 0.0 3.5 v 20 1 25035U 97068B 02174.63143852 0.00001487 00000-0 17386+0 0 08 2 25035 64.1363 133.1781 7204708 250.1326 109.8674 2.02929718 06 However, here are estimated current elements for it, produced by Mike's Int2 program; it should be within a minute or two of these tonight: USA 136 Cent r 8.6 3.0 0.0 3.5 v 20 1 25035U 97068B 02230.65970412 -.00001059 00000-0 00000+0 0 04 2 25035 64.1577 125.7187 7248331 249.6355 .0000 2.02935203 06 For newbies, this is a high-altitude, highly-eccentric-orbit object for which we have no official elements. Due to its slow motion over much of a pass (except near perigee in the far southern hemisphere, of course), having a position off a minute or two at a range of several thousand kilometers is not a severe hindrance if you have a field of view of a least a couple of degrees (e.g., Mike's 12x80 finder scope, which has a 3-degree FOV). I'm not at all good at getting positional measurements, but I may try on this one tonight -- if I can find it. (It should be bright enough in spite of the moonlight.) USA 102? Björn Gimle sent me SkyMap output that tends, as best I can tell, to confirm (no surprise!) that I saw DMSP B5D2-5 (20978, 90-105A) last night, not USA 102. Thanks, Björn! Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 17:00:07 EDT