Molniya 2-38 r2 seen ?

Tristan Cools (tcools@nic.INbe.net)
Sat, 26 Jun 1999 09:46:13 +0200 (CEST)

Yesterday, June 26, I was trying to locate the decaying Molniya rocket,
1986-31D/16686.  It was predicted to have a close pass to 1 Cas at 21:55:45s
UTC but I didn't see it at the predicted time.  However I kept on looking at
this position when I saw an object moving at approximately the same
direction but at 22:02:19s UTC. If it was the decaying rocket then it would
have been 6min34s late.  I had a very narrow angle of view because of
obscuring trees and house blocks so I could only follow it for 5 to 10s.

There is one other candidate for my observation: The UOSAT cover
99021B/25694 which does fit my observation in some way.  But isn't that
object too small for reaching magnitude +4 ?

Observing place was Bruges.

SL-6 R/B(2)

1 16686U 86031D   99176.54684539  .18313664  58114-5  25279-3 0  5238

2 16686  61.7416 146.7868 0918534 261.7939  87.8293 14.43948951 85302



Tristan Cools
tcools@nic.INbe.net
BWGS Member - Belgian Working Group Satellites

Observing at:

Damse Vaart: 3.2486E/51.2279N
Ryckevelde: 3.2867E/51.2054N
Brugge: 3.1611E/51.2108N