Last night while looking with 10x50 binoculars for Superbird A ("A0"?) to start flashing, at about 3:52 UTC I saw something else flashing rapidly (2.5 seconds) to possibly +6.5 not very far to its west (a degree or so). At that time Superbird (which I could not see yet) was at about RA 0:21, Dec -10.3 (2000), and I think the UNID was near 0:16:30, -10.0. Mike McCants got the object in his scope, and we observed it for at least 30 minutes, until it became too faint. If the UNID really is geosynchronous, tonight (Sunday evening local time, Dec. 30 UTC) it and Superbird A0 may be even closer together. Unfortunately, it appears that our weather here will be unfavorable tonight and possibly tomorrow night also. If it turns out that Mike has identified the UNID with Findsat, I beg your pardon! (I checked it with geo.tle, eccen.tle, and mccants.tle and did not get a match.) Last night was good for flashing geosynchs. Besides that UNID, I was also able to see these with my 10x50 binoculars: 84-114A 15385 Spacenet 2 (flash period about 96.5 sec) 85-087A 16101 Intelsat 512 (about 17.1 sec) 87-040A 17969 Gorizont 14 (about 87.1 sec) 89-041A 20040 Superbird A (or A0, about 22.6/11.3 sec) 91-046A 21533 Gorizont 23 (about 55.7 sec) I saw a few Superbird flashes without binoculars, and some of Intelsat 512's probably were bright enough if I had not been looking at it from outside my apartment. Gorizont 23 was faint, maybe +7.0 at best. Gorizont 14 had some secondary flashes visible in Mike's 12x80 finder scope. Mike found Spacenet 2 first; he was looking for either it or GSTAR 1, which were very close together all evening. (Even with his high-power eyepiece, we could not see any sign of GSTAR 1.) We saw two solar panel Iridium flares, Ir 35 (very nice!) and Ir 97"?" (fainter than predicted). Ir 36 -4 antenna flare was as predicted. It was a very pretty evening; many objects -- too many to report -- were easily visible! Hipparcos at about 8,000 km was attempted but not found. All but Intelsat 512 were observed from BCRC, 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. 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 : Sun Dec 29 2002 - 06:02:59 EST