It's SUPER that Rick Baldridge got to see and film the venting "comet" and the two objects! I hope that some other folks got to see some of this event/these events. I got to the BCRC site (30.315N, 97.866W, 280m) about 45 minutes or so after Mike McCants, and when I got there he was already tracking the Centaur and payload, which were still joined, for a few more hours -- this was around 8:30 p.m. CST (2:30 Jan 16 UTC). So Mike tracked them -- and I helped a little bit from time to time -- all the way up. As they were ascending, from time to time we saw flashes two magnitudes brighter that proved to be at three- and six-minute intervals. Presumably it was from the joined Centaur and payload being spin-stabilized (in "barbecue mode") as they were coasting to the geosynch height. We had a few crossing cirrus clouds and a real cloud scare about 6:30 UTC, 30 minutes or so before the main events, but finally the sky turned okay. So we were able in Mike's 8-inch (200mm) dobsonian scope, with a very nice eyepiece that makes it about 80x if I remember correctly, to watch the events. There were some brief events before 7:00 UTC that produced kind of rounded hourglass shapes that dissipated rapidly. There was a different event that produced a trumpet-shaped plume that I could see as a faint fuzzy comet with my 10x50 binoculars for maybe a couple of minutes. Then we watched and waited a while. At some point it became possible to see that there were two objects very close together, one fainter and different in color. Then finally came the main event, the venting and the main, brighter, longer-lasting "comet". For a few minutes it was about +2.5 magnitude; I was still able to see it faintly in my 10x50 binoculars at about 8:22 UTC. Towards the end of its visibility, it went only a couple of degrees north of Alphard (alpha HYA). Some minutes after the plume (the "comet") appeared, the second object reappeared from being obscured by -- I assume! -- the plume. So then Mike tracked the two of them for a while, until it was time to give it up for the night. It was quite exciting, and I am very privileged and appreciative to get to go observing such an event with an expert. Thanks Mike! We saw some easy one-power Telstar 401 flashes beginning sometime between 2:30 and 3:00 UTC. I haven't got the data from my stopwatch yet. 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 : Wed Jan 16 2002 - 05:45:29 EST