I was with a group from the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh in Roseburn Park in the city last night when we saw a very bright swift object, roughly mag -1 or -2 and steady, on a W to E trajectory that carried it a degree or so S of Arcturus at 21:58 UTC. At the time, the star was 52 degrees high in the SSE. Subsequently, I identified this as the Centaur second stage of the Atlas 5 launch that launched from Cape Canaveral at 21:38. At the time of observation, the Centaur and its GPS 2F-4 payload were coasting in an eccentric transfer orbit for which Space-Track has not published a TLE. Three hours after our observation, the Centaur fired for a second time to circularise the orbit and release its payload. Regards Alan -- Alan Pickup / Edinburgh / Scotland / _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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