With the Moon farther away than the day before two geosats were seen with the naked eye from about 2003 Oct 13 23:27 to 23:33 UTC above zeta Ceti. The first one was identified as Sicral 1 (2001-005A,26694) at +16.2 deg E the second as the Hot Bird cluster at +13.0 deg E consisting of five satellites (Hot Bird 1,2,3,4,6). Magnitudes were about 3.3 (Hot Bird) and 3.8 (Sicral). With my 10x50 binocular the Hot Bird cluster looked like a close double star. Both objects were seen almost due south and near local midnight (near maximum elevation and close to the Earth's shadow). The Sun's declination (-7.9 deg) was close to the declinations of the satellites (Sicral 1 -7.7 deg, Hot Birds -7.6 deg). An image is at: http://home.t-online.de/home/R.Kracht/brightgeo.htm Rainer Rainer Kracht Elmshorn, Germany Station 5005 53.7695N 9.6626E 9m Potsdam Datum 53.7679N 9.6614E 47m WGS84 R.Kracht@t-online.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 14 2003 - 10:23:52 EDT