During the night of March 8-9 I've seen geosats first time in my life. I used Heavensat and looked through 15x70 in the place where the geostationary belt crossing the exit from Earth shadow (I did so every next night). I have estimated the magnitudes of flares by comparing it with stars that was close. When after name of sat is '?', I'm not sure exactly what it was. For some reason it's easier to indentify what satellite flared when there's a group of sats close to each other (not all flaring). Don't know how more precisely to identify it, maybe it will come with experience. Eutelsat Hot Bird 13B & 13D = flare was about 6th mag., flared up and extinct together. Eutelsat 9A or Ka-Sat? = 4th mag., spectacular! Eutelsat 3B = 6 mag. Nilesat 102? = 7 mag. March 9-10 night catch was huge: Yahsat 1A = 8 mag. Yamal 202 = 7, very long flare, was visible during 20 minutes. Yahsat 1B = 8.5 Intelsat New Dawn = 6 Hylas 2? = 8.5 Astra 2F = 4, 2C = 7, together, nice. BADR 4 or 5 or 6? = 7 Astra 3B = 4.5, quickly disappeared, <5 min. Astra 2G = 5 Arabsat 5C = 5, quickly. Astra 1N = 5; 1M = 7, together. Tianlian 1-03? = 7.5, quickly. Eutelsat Hot Bird 13B = 7, 13C = 6, together. Sicral 1B = 9, very hard to see, maybe it was illusion. Eutelsat 9A or Ka-Sat? = 4 mag, again! Eutelsat 3B = 5.5, very quickly. Syracuse 3B or Eutelsat 5 West A? = 8.5, very difficult but confidently seen. Nilesat 102 = 6.5, now I'm sure it was Nilesat 102. What was previous night, i don't know, but almost sure it was the same. March 10-11 observations was not very long. MENTOR 6 flared with 7th magnitude, very long. Noticed that it was not in the predicted position (using 2015 Mar 09 Mike McCants classified TLE). In 21:17 UT from N48.5247 E35.0617 it was ~19+-1 sec RA to the west and ~11"+-2" Dec to the south from it, although moving in the same direction as its "ghost". Yahsat 1A = 6 Yahsat 1B? = 9 Mentor 4 = 8. I'm sure that it was Mentor but not Thuraya 2, because Thuraya is predicted to pass to the north from star SAO 138617, and object that I seen is passed to the south from it, as did Mentor 4. After midnight the thin high clouds appeared, which decreased Lm in 15x70 from 9.5 to 7, so I went home. Sincerely Vlad _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Tue Mar 10 2015 - 20:22:26 UTC
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