Observation of #23844 decay

Alan Pickup (alan@wingar.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 23 Apr 1996 18:32:33 +0100

Yesterday, I received the following message from Adam Sunshine 
(Adam.Sunshine@CAS.honeywell.com) of the Saguaro Astronomy Club:

>On the night of April 13-14, about 50 amateur astronomers gathered at 
>Sentinel, AZ (about 30 miles W of Gila Bend) for our annual Sentinel 
>Stargaze (very dark site!). Just after midnight, we observed a 
>re-entry of something, actually two objects with the second in the 
>tail of the first.  Determined to find out what it was, I came across 
>your prediction of the decay of Object # 23844 on the web page of 
>SeeSat-L. Plugging your tle's into my copy of SatSpy, there was a 
>nice plot at the exact time & place of the observation.  Wish I had 
>known about it beforehand, could have gotten a great video of it.  
>Thanks for the posting.

>Adam Sunshine
>Saguaro Astronomy Club
>Properties Officer

Initially I took this as confirmation that the decay had occurred
shortly after 0600 UT (April 14.25), however Adam has corrected me 
as follows:

>Feel free to post my observation to SeeSat-L.  However, the time 
>of re-entry was just after 0700 UT (Arizona does not observe 
>Daylight Savings Time), which is a close match to your earlier 
>prediction of April 14.3.  By my calculations, midnight local 
>time would be 14.29166, so the appearance of the component at 12:03 
>local (according to SatSpy for Windows) fits in nicely with your 
>prediction of 14.3.

Does anyone know of other observations of this event?

Alan
-- 
 Alan Pickup | Home lat. 55d53m48.7s N | Royal Observatory, Blackford
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