Re: InterCos 19 and other stuff
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Mon, 15 Mar 1999 02:03:18 -0600
Richard Keen <richard.keen@kingsmarket.com> wrote:
] 1. Over a year ago, on Dec. 8, 1997, Ron Dantowitz posted a message
] here about Intercosmos 19 (= 11285 = 79020A), in which he noted that in
] a telescope at 200x, the object appeared to be two satellites joined by
] a rod or some connector. ...
] At the appointed time, Intercosmos 19 passed
] through the field.... Lo and behold, it appeared
] double - very much like a double star such as Mizar or Castor, in which
] the two component had about the same magnitude. The separation was
] about 10 arc seconds....
] A quick calculation shows that 10 arc second separation at a range of
] 431 miles means a separation of about 110 feet or 35 meters, or more,
] depending on the true orientation of the pair. Anybody know what the
] real structure of this object is?
There was more discussion of Intercosmos 19 on SeeSat in December
1997, and an illustration and caption were provided by Antonin
Vitek. Sue Worden made a reduced-size version of the illustration
that I believe is the one I'm putting at this location, along with
a caption file:
http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/ik19v6x4.gif (about 6.5k bytes)
http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/ik19.txt
("IK" is for "InterKosmos", of course.) I'm sure that in this
illustration the antennas in question are cropped. I'll leave
those files there a couple of days or so.
A couple of months later, I heard from Nicholas Danilkin, of
Russia, who told me that the total length between "the ends of
the aerials" on Intercosmos 19 is 50 meters.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA