Mike was watching NOSS 4(E) (13844, 83-008E) with his telescope (or maybe the 12x80 finder?) and said the satellite was getting brighter and brighter. I looked up toward the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), and the satellite was about +2 magnitude, near the handle, which it went through. I didn't note the time well, but I think it was around 3:31-32 June 18 UTC. I was able fairly easily to see the USA 136 Centaur 97-068B (25035). It's beginning some pretty good passes over this part of the world. Mike said it was close to on-time on the elements currently in the mccants.tle file. So this is a good chance to see a rapidly tumbling Centaur in a highly eccentric orbit. Near June solstice for a few seasons now I've noticed unusually bright (often easily visible without binoculars) northbound evening passes in the NW by sunsynch objects, especially the earth-observing type (SPOT 4 and 5, CBERS 1, Envisat of course, Landsats, IRS, etc.). I assume that it's very latitude dependent, but it seems like it could be predictable. What hypotheses are there about what surfaces are giving these neat specular reflections? Superbird A (89-041A, 20040) is now west of our meridian and flashing nicely, roughly about 3:26-32 UTC here last night. Conditions haven't been good enough yet this week to make a good try to see the flashes without magnification. I saw several unid crossers last night and just wish there was more time and that I weren't so tired. But none of them was that 2.5-second bright flashing one from last week. Now I see Tony's reply (Thanks, Tony!) that Nozomi (Planet-B) is on the NASA Horizons site: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph I think that it looks like we might have a chance in maybe a half-hour window during the closest approach at about 3:00-4:00 June 19 UTC (if I'm reading it correctly). I wonder how big a telescope would be needed to see it at a range of about 15,000 km (if that's right for .0001 AU). It's not very big. I was sorry to read that it's been beset by some problems, and of course I hope that it can complete its mission with at least a good measure of success. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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