Hi Weather not too good at the moment. Herewith recent observations on USA129 in IOD format 24680 96 072A 0433 F 20001214200034400 27 25 0731409-284920 56 S+062 03 24680 96 072A 0433 F 20001214200042480 27 25 0726300-271300 56 S+062 03 24680 96 072A 0433 F 20001214200049530 27 25 0721597-254760 56 S+062 03 24680 96 072A 0433 B 20001217193654540 27 25 0809520-224300 56 S+065 03 Last night - Dec 17 UT was very poor - thick cirrus. Whilst waiting for USA129 I picked up what looked like two members of a NOSS trio which I am unable to match with any satellites in the current ALLDAT.TLE and CLASSFD.TLE files. They unfortunately passed through the lower left edge of the video frame so I was only able to get two good positions. In an effort to define the inclination I extrapolated a position for the top trailing ) object -it shouldnt be far out Leading (lower object) 17 Dec 19h 00m16.07s UT RA 07h 10.99m, Dec -24d 05.1' Trailing (higher object) 17 Dec 19h 00m17.77s UT RA 07h 10.51m, Dec -24d 28.8' extrapolated ( just outside frame): Trailing object 17 Dec 19h00m20.21s UT RA 07h06.70, Dec -24d 08.4m - all positions J2000.0 both looked identical, both steady ( about magnitude +6.5 ) but cirrus could have been a problem. The trailing object was 0.347 degrees higher in elevation than the leading object and appeared to be travelling parallel to one another and at the same angular velocity. Despite playing the tape back many times I was not able to see a third member . Conditions for tonight look no better - still thick cirrus- ideal for the holiday makers but no good for satellite tracking! Cheers Greg Sorry - no signature yet- still getting my pc back into shape after my battle with so called software from Bill Gates. Site COSPAR #0433, Long 18.51294 deg E, Lat 33.94058 deg S, alt 10 metres -near Cape Town. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Mon Dec 18 2000 - 08:04:47 PST