Well, this is interesting. When I got home from observing, I saw Rob's message about TDF 1. I also had found and timed it -- for 1:45:23.8 (6323.8 seconds), 303 cycles, period 20.870 seconds. (It was still flashing when time came to leave the BCRC site.) Its brightest maxima seemed +4.5 at best, maybe only +5.0. It didn't seem like TDF 1 was when I saw that one before; it seemed more like a Gorizont (fainter, very long period of visibility). Also, at the site, each time that I checked the position to look at it again, it seemed a little off from what I had for TDF 1. I took a very good position (for me!). Two of its flashes straddled 57 AQL (19:54:37, -8.23 [2000] according to HomePlanet). So it came extremely close to that star at about 2002/09/03 05:48:44.8 UTC, plus or minus less than 10.43 seconds. When I ran the position with Findsat and the geo.tle file, I did *not* get TDF 1! I got a perfect match with this one: Cosmos 2282 1 23168U 94038A 02242.60260228 .00000011 00000-0 00000+0 0 240 2 23168 3.8139 71.8718 0008263 245.7311 114.4454 1.00378738 29887 So I want to reserve judgment on which one this was until one more night's observing! (I wonder if Paul or anyone else looked for TDF 1 last night with a much smaller field of view and got a non-obs. Rob and I were using binoculars with several degrees of FOV.) Here's the Encyclopedia Astronautica information on the type of object that Cosmos 2282 is, a Prognoz SPRN Early Warning Satellite: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/prozsprn.htm For reference, here's a TDF 1 elset: TDF-1 1 19621U 88098A 02241.55425113 .00000019 00000-0 10000-3 0 4592 2 19621 4.9152 74.6059 0005200 349.6377 10.5905 0.99192577 47548 Cosmos 2344 (97-028A, 24827). Two or three years ago I saw a very bright, very long flare from this one, on a northbound evening pass. It's doing that type of pass again, and each night, as it precesses to the west, it seems to be getting brighter. It's in a pretty high orbit and moves fairly slowly, and so, especially since it's pretty bright right now, it's pretty easy to find. (It does dim as it gets on to the north.) I saw four same-direction pairs of satellites last night! They were USA 160 A and C, NOSS 2-2 leader and outlier (as well as the trailer), Meteor 2-20 (90-086A, 20826) and Meteor 2-20 Rk (90-86B, 20827), and Cosmos 1975 (88-093A, 19573) and Cosmos 2239 (93-020A, 22590). The last two actually were crossers going the same direction, as Cosmos 1975 is in a much lower orbit than Cosmos 2239. These were all in a fairly wide binoculars field of view, of course. Twice in the last few nights I've seen a single UNID flash that has turned out to be near the position of Telstar 401. Last night it was at about 4:45:20. I have looked for more flashes there without success on both occasions, but I don't think I've managed a complete 130-second look yet. (It may actually require double that.) Also last night again saw a few flashes of 90004 (formerly 90907.) Whew! Observing site was BCRC: 30.315N, 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://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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