Chris Spratt wrote: > Last night (June 11) at about 11:00pm PDT (-7 UTC) I saw through my > binoculars a brightish (about mag. 2.5) reddish-orange satellite moving > from North to the SE. > When it crossed the line it was about 80 degrees up. Unable > to id this one, and I have never see a satellite that color before. > > I believe that some satellites are a golden color but not the > color of Mars. > > Any help iding this is appreciated. The four reddest satellites I know are: ERBS 84108B 15354 Lacrosse 2 91017A 21147 Lacrosse 3 97064A 25017 Lacrosse 4 00047A 26473 You did not indicate the precision of the time of your observation, but taken loosely, Lacrosse 3 may be a match. It made a NW-SE pass that culminated 58 deg above the SW horizon at 10:28 PM PDT (Jun 12, 05:28 UTC). It is predicted to have reached mag 2.8 +/- 1.5. The elevation is lower than you reported, but it is common to over-estimate elevation by 10 to 20 deg. If you are certain that you could not have seen Lacrosse 3, then I may still be able to identify it, if you could provide more precise information, e.g. describe its path through/near a constellation or near a star. The NRO "National Reconnaissance Office" released a photo of what is believed to have been a Lacrosse under construction: http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/images/compos.jpg The gold coloured thermal blanket covering much of the surface of the first four Lacrosses gave them their orange-red hue. Lacrosse 5 (05016A / 28646) apparently uses little or no gold thermal blanket, so it appears nearly colourless. The reddest satellite I have observed is ERBS (Earth Radiation Budget Satellite), listed above. This photo of its deployment from shuttle Challenger reveals that it was almost completely swathed in gold coloured thermal blanket: http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/ERBS_deployment.jpg It is currently making evening passes at your latitude, so you may wish to have a look. I last observed it about 20 years ago, so would be interested to learn whether or not it remains reddish. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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