Last night Mike McCants suggested looking for Dodecapole 2, and it was a pretty good show! It flashed to at least +4.5 but was so complex that I didn't even try to time it! According to Encyclopedia Astronautica, its mass is only 4 kg! It's just a bundle of 12 antennas about 7.6 meters (25 feet) long. DODECAPOLE 2 1 01510U 65065C 00145.13207465 .00004892 00000-0 54360-2 0 3725 2 01510 90.0069 4.3958 0054457 43.7719 316.7735 13.70729651712472 http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/craft/dodapole.htm I noticed that we're going to have Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory passes here each night for the next several nights, right through June 3. If NASA's plan is still in place, GRO is supposed to be deorbited on June 3, so I would suggest that anyone who's interested in getting a last look at it see if there's even a low pass that might be visible depending on available observing equipment. For one-power and binoculars, my experience has been that from here it's pretty phase-sensitive, so that it's usually been faint until it was pretty well illuminated. GRO 8 5 5 4.3 488 x 481 1 21225U 91027B 00139.47879804 .00010420 00000-0 37330-3 0 8299 2 21225 28.4583 182.4662 0004756 65.6973 294.4119 15.27026364388871 Wow! Just saw on TV some awesome film from the Atlas launch -- a camera on board showed MECO and three pieces falling away, including the two halves of the fairing! Mike recovered 97-68B (25035, USA 136 Rk, a Centaur) last night. That's his third recovery this week! I observed Telstar 402 (23249, 94-58A) again last night -- this time by plan not by accident! Observing location, BCRC: 30.314N, 97.866W, 280m. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 02:18:17 PDT