Hello, We have been noticing there's a Geosynchronous Satellite flaring to 2nd magnitude in Aquila (from our location in Erie PA USA 41.853881 -79.956959) for the last several nights. Please see the observing report below from our Astro Club Pres. which was written Saturday July 2, 2011. "He's referring to that same 2nd magnitude stellar object that I spotted in Aquila two nights earlier at Bisbee Observatory. It reappeared again last night (Friday 7/1/11) in nearly the same spot, but this time we were ready for it, and acted. I suspected that the intruder was a naked-eye geo-stationary satellite with the sun hitting it just right, but we couldn't prove that on Wednesday night because we had no stationary telescope. Well, last night all 3 scopes went to the object and we proved that it was, in fact, geo-stationary, as we watched the stars stream past the satellite, while the satellite itself remained centered in the FOV. It stayed at 2nd magnitude for about 5 minutes then began a slow fade with it's apparent eastward motion. Bill followed it in the 24 inch down to about 10th magnitude. It "moved" (or rather the sky moved) from star 26 Aquilae eastward to star 42 Aquilae from 2350 until about 0010 hours during our 20 minutes of following it. Bill is currently researching to figure out which one it is, out over the Atlantic Ocean. This was a big surprise to all, because it was thought that all geo-stationary satellites were not naked eye, but now evidently some are. So be ready for any 2nd magnitude star to suddenly "pop into view" around the equatorial regions. Know where the sun is below the horizon and keep an eye on the opposite direction from the sun. " I've been out of the (very active) satellite observing hobby for quite some years, but remember hearing about this phenomenon back then. Never saw it then, so this was a very special time for me to see this one satellite rising to naked eye visibility. The area we're talking about is (as of Friday 7/1/11, and from our location) RA/Dec 19h 27m 52.1s -4* 49' 04", apparent Alt/Az 34* 10' 09" 138* 34' 08". I searched the immediate vicinity (couple degrees) for other GEO's but none were spotted. I have in the past located some GEO's in my 24" scope over in the SW sky, and then located 4 or 5 others in the area forward and aft, but like I said, this one appeared to be alone, and I was using my 24" f/4 scope so I should have picked up something. And here is another observing report from him earlier this morning 7/5/11... "It was out there again tonight (I was just naked-eye at my home)...5 minutes later at 11:58 pm and farther east of V Aquilae, like 5 or 6 degrees, and only 3rd magnitude tonight... (I know, it's the night sky moving westward at the same time, not the geo satellite).... but not as bright, probably because the sun angle is slowly changing." Questions: Does anyone know which satellite exhibits this behaviour? Or do many? How would I track down which satellite it is? Many thanks, Bill Mitchell "It is often better to keep one's mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20110705/f3a9c1bb/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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