Tiangong 1 and a few other surprises

From: Mal Ninnes (meso@iinet.net.au)
Date: Tue Oct 18 2011 - 11:05:46 UTC

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    A nice fine night here in northwest Sydney and a good 10 months of casual
    observing since my last post.
    
    Saw Tiangong 1 (37820) for the first time and enjoyed picking it out easily. Fast
    moving and good to see a new object.
    
    Anyhow I wanted to switch from naked-eye viewing to binoculars first, but
    recently picked up a very cheap 4" Meade reflector.  So after capturing a very
    quick pass of SeaSat 1 (10967) for an alignment test, I focused on a reasonably
    bright star (Rigel Kentaurus, HR 5459) and whilst adjusting the focus, noticed a
    flasher whiz past the narrow field of view. This was close to 09:31:40 UTC.  
    This seemed to match Ajisai (16908) (using elset 11289.89404170). I think that
    EGP was one of your favourites, Derek? Anyhow I shook my head thinking "what are
    the chances of something like that whizzing past whilst adjusting the focus!"
    Heavensat calculated at 2692km distance. I looked up more object and flash
    details on the SeeSat archive as well.
    
    Hats off to the regular posters, especially those with the constant accurate obs.
    I think that I need to spend more time playing with ObsReduce and do a lot more
    reading. 
    
    
    Regards,
    
    Mal Ninnes
    Sydney, Australia
    -33.733 150.938
    
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