Satellite marathon
Daniel Deak (dan.deak@sympatico.ca)
Mon, 22 Mar 1999 00:01:51 -0500
Hi everybody,
Thanks to Sue and Ed, I decide to spend my Saturday night outside
not to miss a unique tandem tumbling Iridium pass. A Messier objects marathon
was organized by the local astronomy club to give observers a chance to see
a maximum number of Messier celestial objects in one night from dusk til dawn.
At the last minute and given the nice weather, I decided to participate in a
different way by making a satellite observation marathon beginning with the
Iridium pass. It ended at 02:30 AM local when the clouds moved in.
We were 3 people to watch the pass (the others were not there yet) with
binoculars or naked eye. I watched in my 20x80 as they passed in Auriga then
decided to watch at 1x. Iridium 44 was more impressive. I saw only 2 naked eye
flares, the strongest was at mag -1 above Betelgeuse.
I interrupted my marathon to make 2 positional observations as follow :
22251 92 083A 9999 E 19990321010022400 37 25 1313400+564300 68 S+035 07
98004 99 000A 9999 E 19990321012344300 37 25 0953000+144100 68 S+075 07
22251 is USA 86 and 98004 is Novnoss. Note that my site number is changed for
these two with the coordinates being : 45° 53' 55" N, 72° 25' 59" W, 87 m.
The goal of my marathon being to see the greatest number of sats possible, I
didn't take the time to make positional measurements. Also I did not have the time
to prepare myself in advance, so I decided to take my computer with me in the
field, put it in a shed heated by a wood stove and make my predictions on the fly
only a couple of minutes before going outside to observe. Here is the list of my
25 observations (times are UTC on March 21) :
Name USSC# time
Iridium 44 25078 00:00
Iridium 20 24871 00:00
Meteor 1-8 r 05143 00:07
Cosmos 2082 r 20625 00:15
Globalstar 36 25621 00:24
Meteor 2-1 08026 00:28
DMSP B5D1-2 10033 00:44
Cosmos 1091 r 11321 00:45
Cosmos 389 04813 00:53
Cosmos 1371 r 13242 00:54
USA 86 22251 01:00
EGP r 16910 01:09
USA 32 19460 01:12
Novnoss 98004 01:24
Cosmos 1732 16593 01:36
Globalstar 38 25623 01:40
Cosmos 411 r 05218 01:45
Cosmos 2082 20624 01:52
Globalstar 40 25624 01:57
Cosmos 1589 r 15172 02:04
Cosmos 1803 r 17178 02:10
Cosmos 1550 r 14966 02:21
Globalstar 36 25621 02:23
Globalstar 23 25622 02:44
Gorizont 14 17969 03:07
There has been some negative obs not listed there. At 03:00 UTC, I decided
to look for flashing geosync sats. I observed Gorizont 23, Telstar 401 and Superbird
A for 5 minutes each with my 20x80 but saw nothing. I watched Gorizont 14 for 15
minutes and saw only one mag 5 flash at around 03:07 with an 8" telescope.
I took the time to identify my 3 unIDs before leaving the observation site. They
were #5142, 8026 and 25621. I saw all the satellites from the February 9 Globalstar
launch (saw #36 twice). At the end of the night, everybody was inside the shed and
we talked about satellite observation. I think some of them got really interested
and one phoned me today to tell me he installed STSPlus...
Cheers !
Dan
--
Daniel Deak
St-Bonaventure, Québec
COSPAR site 1745 : 45.9483°N, 72.6539°W, 58 m., UTC-5:00
E-mail : dan.deak@sympatico.ca
French language satellite web site : http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.deak/