Progress M-36 / MIR
Alexander Seidel (ase@mail.stelljes.de)
Wed, 17 Dec 1997 18:41:51 +0100
As Vladimir Agapov posted to Seesat this morning Progress M-36 was
undocked from the MIR complex at UTC 06:01:53, and should have made an
evasive manoeuvre planned for UTC 12:11:30 today. I just observed the
two spacecraft at UTC 16:55 on southbound passes 48 deg above my SSW
horizon (Stade near Hamburg/Germany). MIR was leading, followed by the
Progress ship some 2.04 (+/- 0.05) sec later (mean of 5 separate time
interval measurements, relative to stars, in close succession near the
highest elevation) in what seemed to be an almost identical track from
my perspective. MIR was at mag -1, with a short (approx. 5 sec) mag -2
flare in the west, while Progress M-36 was much fainter, mostly at mag
+3, with some slow, but distinct, amplitude variation of brightness over
time.
Alex
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Alexander Seidel Phone/Fax +49 (0) 4141 68772
Stade/Germany N 53.5932 E 9.4683 6m ASL
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