Superbird A obs.
Daniel Deak (dan.deak@sympatico.ca)
Wed, 24 Mar 1999 00:11:28 -0500
Hi everybody,
First, I would like to thank Rob Matson for his accurate predictions
for Superbird A (#20040). I observed this space bird continuously from
03:11:00 to 03:22:45 UTC on March 24 with my 20x80 binoculars.
The first faint flash was seen at mag 9 at 03:12:01. The 3 following
flashes were getting brighter every time and were spaced 23 seconds.
Then, starting with the 03:13:11 flash, an Ff pattern was observed ending
with the 03:16:50 flash where the pattern reversed to fF from 03:17:02 to
03:18:45. Maximum brightness was around mag 4 at 03:15:29 and 03:15:52.
During the Ff and fF patterns, the period was 11.52 seconds. So it
means that at first I saw only the brightest flashes of the pattern.The same
goes for the end of the observation from 03:19:08 to 03:21:03 when the
last faint flash was seen.
In all I observed 38 flashes arranged in a logical pattern. One fainter flash
was missing however, it should have been at 03:18:11 but was not seen. Has
anyone noticed something similar ?
Geosync flashers are quite fascinating !
Dan
--
Daniel Deak
St-Bonaventure, Québec
COSPAR site 1745 : 45.9483°N, 72.6539°W, 58 m., UTC-5:00
E-mail : dan.deak@sympatico.ca
French language satellite web site : http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.deak/