Last night's observations of 03-12B and 97-68B were made by CCD imaging. As I have no wish to replace visual observing entirely with CCD imaging, but to use CCD for slow-moving objects which are difficult to detect visually, I opted for a 'single-shot' system rather than a video camera. The Starlight Xpress MX716 uses a similar chip to Rainer's Mintron and I have coupled it (rather crudely at present) to a Canon 85mm F1.2 lens which gives a field of view of about 4.3 x 3.0 degrees. For my first images of 03-12B, a Centaur rocket, I took a 10s exposure with the camera fixed which resulted in short star trails and an easy-to-spot point source marking the satellite (I havn't found any faulty bright pixels yet). Contrast stretching revealed stars down to about mag 13.5 with enough star trails close to the satellite to get a position accurate to a couple of arcmin relative to the eastern end of the trails (start of exposure at a known time). At only 24 degrees elevation in the skyglow from Southampton's city lights I could not find the satellite let alone mag 13 stars in my 8-inch (200mm) telescope. First results are very encouraging but I must improve the lens mounting to facilitate focussing. Currently the nights are too short to do much experimenting but my first project will be to attempt recovery of the lost Trumpets, 97-68A and 94-26A. 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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 25 2003 - 12:42:36 EDT