Hello there
Robert DuHamel (rsduhamel@mail.geocities.com)
Thu, 25 Jun 1998 21:21:50 -0700 (PDT)
Hello everyone,
I've been an amateur astronomer since the late 1960's. At star parties we
certainly see our fair share of satellites. We like to watch them but
usually don't give a hoot which satellite is which.
One notable exception was a satellite I used to see regularly in the early
1970's. I would usually find this satellite by chance when I would look up
and see a star, of approximately 0 magnitude, where there shouldn't be one.
After the excitement of thinking I might be seeing a nova I would notice
that the "star" was very slowly moving -- obviously a satellite.
This satellite was in a very highly inclined orbit, very nearly 90 degrees
as far as I could tell. As it traversed the sky it would slowly vary in
brightness from about +5 or fainter to about 0 or -1. Once spotted I would
see it at the same time nightly at nearly the same point in the sky, except
about a degree or so to the west of the previous night's track. One night,
at a star party, I saw it (along with everyone else present) at about
10:00pm. That same night we saw it again at 1:00am, considerably to the
west of the earlier track. As I recall, the times were exactly 3 hours
apart as far as we could estimate.
I've always wondered what satellite this was and have never been able to
find out. Are there any old-timers out there who can give me a clue?
I got into satellite observing on October 25 of last year when I looked up
and saw, about 5 degrees east of Jupiter, a yellowish star of equal
brightness. In the ten seconds or so that this "star" was visible it moved
about 0.25 degrees south. My first thought was that I found "my" satellite
again after more than 20 years. However, it was a no-show the next night.
This peaked my curiosity so I searched the internet, on a friends computer,
for information. Before long I was using PCTrack 2.14 on my 286 DOS-only
laptop to track and view satellites in my front yard.
I've just gotten into iridium flares. I use the GSOC site to predict flares
and my laptop, still with PCTrack 2.14, to track the satellites leading to a
flare.
That's all for now. Bye Y'all
Bob DuHamel
rsduhamel@mail.geocities.com
<www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/1728/>