Mike pointed his telescope at Intelsat 512 (85-087A, 16101) to see if he might find it even though it was not expected to be flashing. But in fact it was flashing and brightened rapidly such that I could easily see it with my 10x50 binoculars. I got times from 4:40:05 to 4:51:05 on June 23 UTC (the last few using the telescope). Flash period was 20.63 seconds; here's a PPAS report: 85- 87 A 03-06-23 04:41:05.5 EC 660.3 0.2 32 20.63 +4.5->inv Location was BCRC: 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. Objects (mostly sunsynch scientific Earth-observing types) seen without binoculars on northbound evening passes in the northwest recently (generally near if not in Ursa Major): 23560 95-021A ERS 2 25940 99-057A CBERS 1 25994 99-068A Terra 26481 00-050A Zi Yuan 2A 27386 02-009A Envisat (but is huge and also 1x visible elsewhere) 27421 02-021A SPOT 5 27597 02-056A Adeos II (Midori II) 27699 03-009B IGS 1B I'm sure that in previous summers I've seen others do the same, so maybe in July and August the list will grow longer. There are also others that are easier than expected, based on range and phase angle, to see using binoculars. 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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