Hi James, > I was watching the sky around Perseus when I'm sure I noticed a .2 mag > flare near Mirfak. After running Ted Molczan's IDSat program I found 3 > possibilities. I then inputted the TLE's into Starrynight and discovered > that Globalstar 56 was the only realistic possibility. Globalstar 56 > had a visual magnitude of 5.4 and though he seeing was good I did not > spot it before the apparent flare. According to Starrynight, > Globalstar 56 entered shadow at the point where I thought I saw > the flare. You provided your coordinates, but you didn't give the date/time of the observation. If it was on the evening of January 1, then Cosmos 1143 was at magnitude +2.5 when it passed by Mirfak at around 17:11:10 UT. Resurs 1-3 R/B also passed near Mirfak at 16:58:25 UT. Iridium 84 was very close to Mirfak at 17:02:45, but it would not have been bright, and should not have flared/glinted unless the satellite has recently malfunctioned. If you can provide the date and approximate time of your observation, I can probably tell you what it was. If the date was Jan 1st, it definitely wasn't Globalstar 56 (it wasn't particularly close to Mirfak at any time that evening). Best, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Jan 02 2002 - 18:36:34 EST