Obs Titan

Greg Roberts (grr@da.saao.ac.za)
Mon, 13 Jan 1997 10:39:01 +0200

Morning All,
Herewith last nights observations of the recent Titan launch:
12 Jan 1997:
#24680  19h26m03.3s UTC   RA 10h 15.3m,Dec -25d 20.6' (J2000) mag 6.5
#24680  21h03m18.6s UTC   RA 03h 32.2m,Dec -78d 20.1' (J2000) mag 8

Object #24681 ( rocket) was seen but due to buildings and shadow entry unable
to get a position,but was running approximately 90 sec early on elements in
latest N2L from Molczan.
As a matter of general interest I was setting up for observing at the start
of the evening and happened to be looking southwards when I saw a very bright
light moving towards me.Thinking it was an airliner I had a look at it with
the scope but saw it had no landing lights. As it continued to approach me it fade
it faded slowly and eventually ended up at about mag 7.5 steady. I got a
position and time and this confirmed the object as LANDSAT 4. The interesting
part is that for about 30 seconds on longer, when first sighted,it was steady
at magnitude -3!  ( excuse typing errors- for 30 seconds on longer read OR).
Tony Beresford pointed out to me that credit for the discovery of the Titan
objects must also go to Rob McNaught - my sincere apologies for missing him
out but as the time of my previous message I had not yet read all the earlier
e-mail that I had to go through- 45 megabytes in all!.
To those that have written me by email about time signals and the observations
I will reply shortly-Im currently going through a modem and three computers
to get to my work pc so cant edit and have to type "live".
Regards to all
Greg