Last night looking for Gorizont 29 (which I have not been able to see the last week or two) I saw an unid flashing geosynch. The brightest maxima were +4.5. The flash period was about 42 or a multiple of that. I could not see every maximum with my 8x42 binocular, and after 15 or 20 minutes I could no longer see it at all. Mike got it in the telescope somewhat later. There were two or three known objects nearby but no match in the geo.tle file. My very approximate positional points: 2004-09-20 UTC 04:20? star RA 19:13:10.8, Dec -12.4 (2000) -- It went .25 deg or less (maybe less than .10 deg), passing north of the star. 04:30 RA 19:20?, Dec -12.5? 05:00 RA 19:50, Dec -13 In the telescope it was interesting, with tertiary maxima and the primaries appearing at least part of the time to be very quick doubles or triples (flickers). BCRC site: 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. We saw Gorizont 15 (88-028A, 19017) for a little while, with flash period under 15 seconds -- the second shortest flash period of a geosynch, that I can remember. (The shortest is Superbird A at 11.2 seconds.) Geosat Galaxy 11 (99-071A, 26038) has been visible the last few evenings with my 8x42. Last night I'm pretty sure that I also could see DBS 3 (95-029A, 23598) next to it. With the telescope the previous two nights, Nimiq 1 (99-027A, 25740) was seen, much fainter, very near DBS 3. (Thank you very much to Mike for identifying them!) I saw another one later last night but am out of steam to try to identify it. Flaring geosat season is beginning here, but these are anomalous, in that they are flaring about three hours before shadow entry (as has been observed of some of them in previous seasons). Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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