Two Molniya Flashers
Mike McCants (mikem@freeside.fc.net)
Mon, 27 Jul 1998 00:47:45 -0500 (CDT)
On Saturday evening, Sue Worden, Ed Cannon, and I (Mike McCants)
traveled to a "dark sky" site about 65 miles northwest of Austin.
Quite a few other members of the Austin Astronomical Society
also attended this star party.
This site is latitude 30.88, longitude 98.43 west.
Two Molniya flashers were accidentally discovered. In both cases
flashes to about 2nd magnitude were noticed by someone and then
the object was tracked in my 8 inch telescope. As we watched,
the flashes gradually decreased in magnitude over a period of
about 3 minutes.
The first object was 12133, Molniya 3-14, 81-002A:
*** 1998 July 26 *** Times are UT ***
HGT ALT AZI HRS MIN R A DEC RANGE
7234 72.0 122.2 4 41 19 24.7 20.0 7361
7090 71.1 124.2 4 42 19 26.9 19.0 7229
6944 70.1 126.0 4 43 19 29.1 17.9 7097
I watched this object again from my driveway this evening with
7x50 binoculars.
*** 1998 July 27 *** Times are UT ***
HGT ALT AZI HRS MIN R A DEC RANGE
6700 69.6 128.8 4 40 19 31.3 16.2 6859
6552 68.4 130.4 4 41 19 33.8 15.0 6728
6404 67.3 132.0 4 42 19 36.3 13.8 6598
6254 66.0 133.4 4 43 19 38.9 12.4 6468
The period was timed this evening as 14 cycles in 155.5 seconds for
a period of 11.1 seconds. Brightest flash was to about magnitude 2.5.
The second object was 16393, Molniya 3-27, 85-117A:
*** 1998 July 26 *** Times are UT ***
HGT ALT AZI HRS MIN R A DEC RANGE
3931 33.6 162.9 8 15 22 56.1 -24.0 4979
3803 30.7 162.8 8 16 23 1.1 -26.7 4955
3676 27.8 162.6 8 17 23 6.4 -29.4 4938
3550 24.9 162.5 8 18 23 12.1 -32.2 4930
This Molniya was timed in 10 cycles in 96.4 seconds for a period
of 9.6 seconds.
Of course Ed Cannon also independently identified these objects
from the observations.
Mike McCants
Austin, Tx