Hello All, Simply a perfect night here in Germany for observing! Finally! On a scale of 1-10, Mar 4th 02 ranks as a 10! I started the night off during the last minutes of the setting sun with my Baader sun filters on at 20x Incredible! I have never done this when the sun was so low, and was amazed at the way the sun's edges seemed to break down through the atmosphere, and how I could see solar flares boiling off the top as it continued to sink below the horizon, Incredible! Of course, this was all an optical allusion, but if you want to simulate solar prominences through some foil filters try this! After the sun sunk below the horizon, I immediately swung the scope up back along the sun's path about 10d and picked up Venus as a small bright ball. Five minutes later, (18:30 UTC) I picked up Jupiter and it's four moons, then Saturn, and on to the Plaides, Awesome! Then it was time to set up for my first sat. DEBUT (ORIZURU) (#20479U) was about 5 seconds early. It surprised me as it went sailing through my small 1.8d field of view (fov) at 18:14:33 (UTC). Steady at about Mag 6. Then at 18:44 (UTC), picked up MEGSAT (#25722U) on time but couldn't get an accurate Mag. Maybe about 5. Picked up Tips at 19:11 (UTC) going through Cepheus! Both Ralf and Norton exchanging greetings across their 4000 meter phone line! What a sight! At about 40x you can see the glowing 4km tether measuring about 15 arc minutes flying vertical with Ralf and Norton exchanging mag 5-6 flashes with each other. Picked up USA 144 at 19:39 (UTC) slowly moving through a 1.8d fov steady at about a mag 7. Temperature is starting to drop, about 3d (C). I saw SAPPHIRE (#26932U) at 20:07 (UTC) at about mag 6 and steady. At 20:35 (UTC) acquired PICOSAT 9 (#26930U) steady and very faint at about mag 9. Read Ed Cannons thread on Centaur 2 8.6 3.0 0.0 5.0 d 12 (#00694U) and decided to try for it. Sorry Ed, I picked this one up way to late, only got about 30 seconds of timing on this one before it slipped behind the neighbors roof-top. No flashes noted. Very steady at about mag 4. I could have picked it up about a minute earlier but was afraid it would be to low on the horizon to pick up. So I waited for it to be about 10d in altitude. When I picked it up, it was bright and steady! Shoot! Maybe next time. BTW, this sat was in the exact same spot at 19:24 (UTC) as it was when I saw it at 21:12 (UTC) How can this be? I didn't see the first pass at 19:24 (UTC) because it was behind my neighbors house, but my prediction program showed it going through the exact same starfield as the later pass when I picked it up. Temperature down to 1d (C). I tried to make Raduga 33 at 12:35 (UTC) but the wife had other plans ; ).. What an Interesting orbit this satellite has! What is it? Some type of Molniya orbit or what? Look at the Perigee and the Apogee, Wow! Well that's all for now from Germany! It is now the morning of the 5th and clouds have already moved in...Drats! Oh well, back in the machine shop to try to hook up a web cam to my big binos! Till the next clear night...keep looking up! Russ Bessom - russbessom@desurf.com Zweibruecken Germany Lat 49.14.0 N / Long 7.19.0 E - 325m ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 05 2002 - 05:37:41 EST