Raduga 33 one-power flashes
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Sun, 21 Mar 1999 17:04:46 -0600
Last night at the star party at Canyon of the Eagles, where
limiting magnitude was +6 or better, several of us saw a
number of one-power flashes from Raduga 33 (23794, 96-10A)
when it was at a range of about 24,000 km, give or take a
couple of thousand. Estimates of flash magnitudes were as
bright as +2 for some of them. The flashes occurred every
17 seconds.
By the way, that pair of Iridiums (20 and 44) was very nice
using binoculars, but there were only a few one-power flashes
during the five minutes or so that they were in binocular
view.
There was a pass of Hotbird 5 Rk (25496, 98-57B, a Centaur)
that raised some question about SpaceCom's RCS value for it
of 5 square meters. This is a high-drag object.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA