Re: Slow moveing unknown
Stephmon@aol.com
Tue, 11 May 1999 00:37:55 EDT
In a message dated 5/10/99 9:43:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
kj5tf@madisoncounty.net writes:
<< Sunday evening (monday 02:31 UTC) I was outside and saw a 0 magnitude
satellite moveing slowly north. It passed 5 - 10 degrees east of the zenith
and then faded to invisable.
It's path would have taken it thru the bowl of the big dipper. I think the
inclination must have been nearly 90 deg.
Its speed reminded me of Pageos, so it must have been pretty high up. >>
Well, you asked for guesses, so I ran a check of alldat.tle and found a few
candidates (I'm afraid I can't say they seem likely, based on mean
magnitude). Below are the edited outputs from Satellite Hunting...
First, the best match for time and path (the star plot shows it actually
passing -through- the bowl of the big dipper). Alldat doesn't include a mean
magnitude, but a mag 0 pass would require an extremely fortunate 'flare'
geometry, or a mean magnitude of roughly +0.7 (I think we would all be
familiar with it, if this were the case). Is anyone familiar with this object?
UTC Sat Name Sat # Elev. Azimuth Height
02:25:05 90081CD 20971 20° 161° [S] 830
02:28:55 90081CD 20971 81° 073° [E] 827
02:32:45 90081CD 20971 20° 350° [N] 824
Cosmos 465 passed through the bowl of the big dipper (just inside gamma Ursa
Major) and makes a near zenith pass, but the calculated magnitude is about
+6.2. This is the highest/slowest of the candidates.
UTC Sat Name Sat # Elev. Azimuth Height
02:19:49 Cosmos 465 05683 20° 196° [S] 994
02:24:29 Cosmos 465 05683 89° 007° [N] 999
02:29:12 Cosmos 465 05683 20° 017° [N] 1003
The next two pass through the handle, very near the bowl (between delta and
epsilon Ursa Major). Calculated magnitudes are 4.8 for Iridium 59 and 5.4 for
DMSP B4D2-7. Iridium 59 should have been far from a favorable flare geometry,
but if it has strayed from its ideal antenna orientation, a flare might be
possible.
UTC Sat Name Sat # Elev. Azimuth Height
02:26:35 Iridium 59 25275 20° 175° [S] 775
02:30:15 Iridium 59 25275 79° 087° [E] 775
02:33:56 Iridium 59 25275 20° 006° [N] 775
UTC Sat Name Sat # Elev. Azimuth Height
02:28:09 DMSP B5D2-7 23233 20° 155° [S] 841
02:31:59 DMSP B5D2-7 23233 71° 073° [E] 840
02:35:50 DMSP B5D2-7 23233 20° 354° [N] 840
___________________________________________
Regards,
Stephen
Satellite Hunting v1.0.1 is available for download at
http://stephen.fathom.org/sathunt.html