NOSS 2-3 by naked eye
Terry Pundiak (terrypun@fast.net)
Thu, 02 Jul 1998 00:05:46 -0500
The triplet satellites NOSS 2-3 (C,D, and E) came over on schedule
tonight and they looked as neat as ever - about 1 to 2 degrees apart
from each other... forming a nice vee in the direction that it was
heading. Very dim - about mag 5 or 6, intially, but brightened a great
deal near their illumination extinction. And just 10 or 20 seconds
before they entered the Earth's shadow, they had brightened to about
magnitude 3.5 - and acturally naked eye visible even in my light
polluted area were I can't see anything dimmer than about 4.0 at this
time.
Last week, while on vacation in the deserts of Utah near the town of
Moab, I saw so much of the Milky Way that satellites were not a priority
- incredible naked eye things - North American Nebula easily seen with
binocculars and maybe even naked eye! (and a meteor shower Friday night
at 11 pm with the radiant center was at zenith - maybe 30 meteors in a
1/2 hour - mostly very dim but some near fireball status) Perfect
nights!
I tried to find a few NOSS triplets during the week and I only got to
see them twice... It is easier to see them here in my light polluted
area! And that doesn't make sense to me. Of course, there are 20 times
more stars in the desert, but I would expect the satellites to be
brighter, too. They seemed to blend in with all the dim stars - not
being any brighter than all those guys.
Do satellites punch through light pollution a bit better than those
infinitely thin stars?
Terry Pundiak, M.D.
N3BDC
Easton, PA
lat 40.693389 N, long 75.26615 W