Saw 8 polar birds, some not appearing in the Heavens-Above list of predicts. Several were not viewable except with my binoculars as I was scanning the skies looking for others I had seen. At one point (5:38 Eastern, 0938Z) I saw 3 in almost the same spot, 2 going S-N, the other N-S, at about a 10 degree orbit. I'm wondering if perhaps I saw some Fengyun debris? Has any been officially observed yet? 0532 Eastern/0932Z - One orbting N->S - H-A says Cosmos 1455 is the closest one, but it was 4 minutes earlier and at 54 deg, whereas this one was overhead. I'm going to go with UNID here. 0538 Eastern/0938Z - The trio - I observed one going S->N and as I was training my binoculars on it, I noticed it didn't look right, then realized I was actually seeing another bird, lower magnitude, in nearly the same orbital direction. As I was trying to train on the brighter of the two to gauge how far apart they were, the N->S bird came into the field of view of my binoculars, and as I followed it, the dimmer S->N came in to view. H-A shows Cosmos 1437 Rocket there at about that time, however, it would have been to the west of Knoxville, and all this action was above me and to the east, at about 75-70 degrees. If the elements were out of date, then it was probably the brightest of the two going S->N. Cosmos 1500 Rocket shows up on H-A but I'm certain that's not the one I saw, as it's altitude was almost in line with 1437 in relation to my location. 1500 is coming from the NNW to SSW and this was NNE to S. The brighter of the two S->N objects also appeared to be going faster, as if in a lower altitude. 0542 Eastern/0942Z - One orbiting S->N - H-A says Cosmos 2360 Rocket at about that time 0551 Eastern/0941Z - One orbiting S->N - H-A says Cosmos 1937 Rocket at about that time 0555 Eastern/0955Z - One orbiting S->N - very dim, only seen after I looked using binoculars. Morning sunrise pollution starting to affect viewing. H-A says Cosmos 1125 Rocket at about that time. 0559 Eastern/0959Z - One orbiting S->N - very dim again, final scan as I was wrapping up and heading back inside. H-A says Meteor 1-14 Rocket at about that time. Nice pleasant morning for a look out and up. 3 meteors paid a visit, one leaving a trail I could view with my binoculars for about 10 seconds. I'm very much interested in the trio I saw, two going north, the other south. -- Greg Williams K4HSM k4hsm@knology.net http://www.twiar.org http://www.etskywarn.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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