Got up early this morning to take a quick look at SuitSat passing 1 deg South of Arcturus (at an elevation of 54 deg) using 15x80 binoculars. It appeared brighter than expected (my estimate is about mag 4). This may be due to the favorable phase angle at the time and probably a lucky attitude. The pass occurred very close to the predicted 5:43:43 UT (I pressed the Reset button on my stopwatch before copying the recorded times - I had been out of bed for just a few minutes, sorry). I didn't follow SuitSat long enough to see any variations in brightness as a second weaker (mag 8) satellite appeared almost simultaneously. As the former SeeSat-L reports about SuitSat mentioned a magnitude between 6 and 8 I rather followed the second satellite until I realized it was moving South to North - incompatible with SuitSat. The ISS pass 2:40 min later followed the path of the first (brighter) satellite which had thus been SuitSat. I find it interesting that - given a favorable illumination - a free floating astronaut some 430 km away in space could be seen by an observer on Earth with the naked eye! I have only a limited set of orbit elements and was unable to identify the second satellite. Would anybody be able to identify it? (R.A. 14h18m, Decl.18d11m, 5:43:45 UT, moving in a northerly direction; Lat.49.8822, Long.8.6558, alt.135m). Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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