I just saw four of the five objects from the Atlas/MMS launch two days ago. I used an 8 inch Celestron and the faintest object was around magnitude 8. That corresponds to a standard magnitude of 6 which I will use pending additional observations. What misled me is that as I was checking limiting magnitude around two minutes prior to the passage of MMS1, I saw an object go by with an apparent deviation of about 15 degrees in the expected flight path. I noted the time and planned to check the identity later. Then another along the same path and a third and a fourth. Checking the entire elset database around the middle of the pass times plus or minus six minutes showed no other satellites with that path near the target stars. The first observed satellite was at 03:22:57 UT on 15 March 2015. RA 7 hr 26 min 29 sec, Dec +09 deg 18' 23" From Falcon, CO USA. The other times were not recorded but I will need to do that on the next attempt as well as start looking sooner. Ron Lee _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Sat Mar 14 2015 - 23:25:00 UTC
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