I was able to watch the object called USA 144 for a little while last night. It was close to on time compared to the prediction below. It was only about 5th magnitude at maximum, implying an intrinsic magntude of only about 6. This seems much too faint for what should be quite a large payload. I have seen one of the big spinning payloads in the past and one thing that was remarkable was the "square wave" light variation seen. In other words, if the object was spinning around its long axis and it had stripes of white and black paint running lengthwise along that axis, then sunlight would alternately strike a white stripe and then a black stripe. There were very sharp increases and decreases in brightness that could be described as a "square wave". A square wave with a one second period might indicate 4 pairs of alternating white and black stripes and a true spin rate of 4 seconds. On the other hand, a tumbling object will usually show more gradual changes in brightness (unless there is a sudden increase/decrease in the specular component of the brightness). The object I saw last night seemed to be a rather small piece of tumbling debris. I would guess only 1 or 2 meters in size. The brightness ranged from about 5th magnitude at max down to something close to 8th magnitude. In general, it was faint quite a bit of the time, increasing to 5th or 6th magnitude for a second or two about every 8 seconds. The tumble did not seem perfectly regular. At one point I believe that two maxima occurred fairly close together. One rather faint (mag 6?) "flash" was observed. The instrument used was a 12x80 telescope. 30.315 97.866 920. Bee Caves Rsrch Ctr 1999 June 8 Tue evening *** Times are PM CDT (UT-5) 25744 USA 144 6.0 H M S Tim Al Azi C Dir Mag Dys F Hgt Shd Rng EW Phs R A Dec 10 0 55 .0 59 240 C 267 5.1 1 4 245 80 283 2.9 85 1149 12.0 10 1 15 .0 54 210 241 5.0 1 4 245 54 298 3.0 69 1231 -2.0 10 1 34 .0 45 191 226 5.2 1 4 245 27 336 2.8 57 13 6 -13.9 USA 144 1 25744U 99028 A 99159.07478761 .00062000 00000-0 71960-3 0 00 2 25744 63.4100 42.4565 0010000 349.9893 10.0106 15.61344808 08 Mike McCants Austin, Tx