Jeff Umbarger wrote: > Can someone explain why LES 8 (and out of control > geosats like it) flash earlier each night by an amount > of time that *exceeds* how much earlier the sun sets > each night? ... I guess I'm assuming that it's spin > plane is fixed to the stars - is that a good assumption? I'll "me too" that with respect to LES 8. But actually most of them, especially the ones drifting to the west, flash later each night. So LES 8 seems unusual in that respect. I think Mike explained it in his message yesterday. Last night's brightest three flashes were 1:45 to 1:49 UTC. While watching them, we were being continually attacked by roving bands of marauding mosquitoes -- the worst I remember in ten years of observing from BCRC. Because of them, moonrise became enough to induce an early end to the observing session. Fast flasher! Due to a stopwatch wrong-mode accident, my count of 50 cycles from Cosmos 2392 Aux 1 (02-037E, 27474) went unrecorded, but it did those 50 cycles in maybe about 30 seconds or so, before shadow entry. The magnitude may have been as bright (a few of them) as +5.0, maybe. Its height was about 300 km, and it was moving very rapidly. After a long time, we saw SCD 2 (98-060A, 25504) flashing rapidly just before shadow entry. It's spin-stabilized. 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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