I saw this unid Wednesday evening local time, July
10 UTC. I don't get any good matches from Findsat.
04:01:11 RA 16:15 Dec -3.0
04:03:39 RA 17:40.5 Dec -13.6
It was +5.5 magnitude and steady. Location was
BCRC: 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m.
Wednesday evening, watching Lacrosse 2, there was a
bright (+1.5) flash beside it. I put binoculars on
the spot (a few degrees from the end of the handle
of the Big Dipper, maybe 14:10, +46) to watch for
more flashes, and the next one was close to the
same spot -- something moving quite slowly.
Findsat says it was Cosmos 1305 (81-088A, 12818).
The flash period was maybe about 15 seconds. After
a few flashes it went invisible. Cosmos 1305 was
the victim of a launch failure.
NOAA 14 (23455, 94-089A) is tumbling. I first
reported this last August. It was decommissioned
on 23 May 2007. Being a payload, of course it has
the potential for spectacular flashes.
Earlier tonight Cosmos 292 Rk (69-070B, 04071) was
tumbling slowly with a period of maybe about 25-30
seconds. It was disappearing briefly on the minima.
In watching for 90077 to appear, I saw a flash about
four degrees south of its predicted position. It
was Gorizont 17 (89-004A, 19765). Its maxima were
quite bright for a Gorizont, and Mike measured its
flash period at 29.8 seconds, pretty fast.
We've seen DSP F19 (Brad's unid, 25669, 99-017A, USA
142) a couple of times lately, and it's spectacular!
Three evenings lately I've watched a series of
Iridium flares low to very low in the WSW. They are
about 9 minutes apart, and each one is a few degrees
lower in the sky. They have been from magnitude +5
(faint but definitely flaring) to one that was at
least -4. I use Rob Matson's Iridflar.exe to run
predictions for these. All of the flares have been
reflections from the front MMA. So, this is a way
to see four or five of them in a row (mostly using
binoculars due to their distance and atmospheric
extinction).
Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA
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