Telstar 401 (22927) -- the flash period accelerated by more than one second in only one week: 93- 77 A 04-02-15 03:30:28 EC 1137.7 0.2 11 103.43 +1.0->inv 93- 77 A 04-02-19 03:03:13 EC 821.5 0.2 8 102.69 +1.0->inv 93- 77 A 04-02-22 01:41:10 EC 715.5 0.2 7 102.22 +1.0->inv The third observation above was on a mostly cloudy night, through mostly thin cirrus, using 8x42 binoculars, but part of the time I could see Orion's belt stars, so at least a few of the flashes probably would have been visible without magnification. By the way, a fellow SeeSat person sent a link to a very funny article about Telstar 401's failure, and it implies that what we are seeing can't be that satellite: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/v02/rnd02_05.shtml Interestingly, SpaceCom has continued to produce orbital elements for it for over seven years now. Here are some other PPAS reports: Intelsat 4-7 Rk (06797) -- 73- 58 B 04-02-18 02:31:53 EC 66.4 0.2 20 3.32 Fleetsatcom 4 Rk (12069), seen unexpectedly several minutes before the culmination prediction -- 80- 87 B 04-02-19 02:36:21 EC 382.6 0.4 28 13.66 Double Star 1 (28140), which is spin-stabilized at 15 rpm -- 03- 61 A 04-02-19 03:49:12 EC 40.7 0.2 10 4.07 The next three nights here look to be cloudy with some rain. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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