Chris Zietkiewicz wrote: > I initially expected the task of identifying a two satellite formation > (linear with one trailing the other) to be a simple task due > to the limited number of potential candidates but I am struggling to make > the ID using HA. Perhaps someone with a spare moment can show me the > proper way to use HA to make an identification in situations like this. I believe that you observed the NOSS 3-1 formation. The leading object is 01040C / 26907; the trailer is 01040A / 26905. They should have been about mag 6.5 at az 60, and about 7.2 at az 100. Official NOSS orbital elements are secret; however, they are routinely tracked by hobbyists; additional information about them is available here: http://www.satobs.org/noss.html Mike McCants produced the following elements, which are our most recent: 1 26905U 01040A 10137.87084802 .00000010 00000-0 17152-4 0 00 2 26905 63.4230 147.5705 0141000 0.5214 359.4786 13.40554857 03 1 26907U 01040C 10137.87077139 .00000010 00000-0 17124-4 0 06 2 26907 63.4273 147.3863 0143000 359.8001 0.1999 13.40554455 01 Heavens-Above has our NOSS elements, but they were too faint to have been included in it's daily predictions for all satellites brighter than magnitude 3.5, 4.0 or 4.5, which is intended for satellites visible to the unaided eye. Calsky.com's Tracking/Identification feature may be useful for identifying fainter satellites; I have not tried it. If you can run 16-bit MS-DOS programs, then Mike McCants Findsat is excellent for identifying satellites: http://www.io.com/~mmccants/programs/findsat.zip My 16-bit MS-DOS program, IDSat is available here: http://www.satobs.org/programs/IdSat/IDSat.zip Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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