Observed 33440 2008-058-B Cosmos 2445 R yesterday morning on a dawn shadow exit pass in a clear moonlit sky. This started off as a quick 1X look at this pass (in view of the early hour) which was due to commence at 4:33:33 on November 19 local (1533:33 on the 18th UTC) and be around mag 2.4 at culmination decreasing to 9.5 mag on loss. However immediately on acquisition I noticed it appeared to be flaring to around 1 mag in what appeared to be an irregular pattern, and looking through binoculars this seemed to confirm that that was the case. Sorry for lack of precision, I did attempt a count but was not able to do this accurately in the circumstances. I have upgraded to Olympus 10 x 50 DPS i binoculars and these are proving their worth. and are not too heavy for the relatively short duration of satellite passes. I was hoping to confirm this flashing this morning on its 1508 UTC shadow exit pass, but not observed for some reason: though there was some cloud there was reasonable visibility in the area of interest. (Another spinoff of the upgrade to 10 x 50, much more is visible in harder conditions.) Some consolation for the otherwise abortive early morning start was provided by a meteor sighting. Expected visible passes between here and expected decay are not particularly good and cloud is may build up so it would be good if anyone other observers could check this object. Though we have daylight passes it doesn't look likely this will be one to decay anywhere near here. Robert Holdsworth Wainuiomata New Zealand 174.948E 41.261S ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 19 2008 - 17:52:49 UTC