Matija Perne wrote, > At 3:57:00 I noticed a satellite approximately 15 degrees > above SSE horizon flying towards east. It was slowly tumbling > and was changing brightness from magnitude 2 or 3 to > invisible and back in about 15 seconds. Could it be Shenzhou > 5 or its rocket? Congratulations on posting the first observation of an object from this mission, less than 3 h after launch. My search elements for the rocket are in excellent agreement with your observation; here is the ephemeris for the pass that you observed: 15/10/ 3 03:00 - 04:53 UTC J2000.0 EL > 15 Matija Perne Shenzhou 5 r 03000B 70004 Bull = 3 Matija Perne TIME %I Mvd AZ EL R.A. DEC FE VANG RANGE ALT -------- -- ---- --- -- -------- --------- ---- ---- ----- ----- 03:56:40 LU 54 3.5 176 17 06:42:24 -27:19:04 3.1 0.63 696 231 03:56:48 LP 50 3.6 171 17 07:05:17 -26:35:50 3.1 0.65 686 230 03:57:00 43 3.8 163 17 07:38:12 -25:13:36 3.0 0.66 681 229 03:57:11 38 4.1 156 17 08:07:40 -23:40:08 2.9 0.64 687 229 03:57:23 32 4.4 149 16 08:38:07 -21:44:40 2.8 0.61 704 228 03:57:35 27 4.8 142 15 09:06:06 -19:42:49 2.7 0.57 731 227 03:57:48 22 5.2 135 14 09:33:16 -17:32:02 2.6 0.51 770 226 03:58:03 17 5.7 128 12 10:00:33 -15:11:07 2.5 0.45 828 225 03:58:20 13 6.4 121 11 10:26:40 -12:50:49 2.4 0.38 904 224 03:58:40 10 7.1 115 9 10:51:54 -10:34:39 2.3 0.30 1006 223 Since the object was tumbling, it almost certainly was the rocket. Shenzhou should have been trailing behind a short distance, but could have been too faint to see at the time. Ted Molczan ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Oct 15 2003 - 02:07:29 EDT