This week each night after attending meetings at ESA's ESTEC facility I have tried to do some sat observing from near my hotel in Noordwijk Aan Zee. The usual weather passages brought cold and rainy weather, but in between I observed one interesting naked eye flasher which produced specular flashes of -1 heading north to south on 5 December 2000 at 0537UT; at that moment it passed near Eta Ursa Majoris. After returning to Houston this morning, I ran SKYMAP and did not find a match except for Iridium 9 heading at the right time, but in the the opposite direction. This object had primary flashes 8 seconds apart with a secondary visible at +3 occuring 1 second or so after the primary max. A very interesting object to watch. Anyone have any idea which object it was? Also observed Iridium 61 at -1 (prediced at -3) on 3 December at 1625UT, Iridium 83 at -4 on 5 December at 0527UT, (predicted at -1), and while outside Schipol airport in Amsterdam Iridium 17 at -7 (predicted at -3) on 7 December at 0704UT. Paul ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 08 2000 - 06:38:00 PST