> Same passes, about 120km to the west. > > The Shenzhou 3 Rocket is in a slow roll. I had a rough flash times > of about 11-16 seconds. The first cycle (beginning at 0:07:48.45 > UTC, 30 March) consisted of 7.25 of 0 mag followed by 5.75 of inv. > The next cycle was 14.25 at a brightness peaking at -1 mag followed > by 2.88 secs inv. The next 3 cycles were difficult to determine > because it did not go completely inv. They were 7.83, 10.93 and > 15.3 secs respectively. Although there was a fair amount of ambient > light it was clear to me that this object was tumbling. The pass > itself was NW -> E - max elevation 55 deg in the NNE. What are the possible explanations for a varying rotation period during a single pass? I would think that even a complex tumbling action would still produce the same rotation period. Or perhaps I am not visualizing it properly. ------------------------------ Jonathan T. Wojack tlj18@juno.com 39.706d N 75.683d W 5 hours behind UT (-5) ***DOZENS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, ASTRONOMY, SKY AND TELESCOPE, AD ASTRA MAGAZINES ARE FOR SALE*** ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sat Mar 30 2002 - 15:45:18 EST