Re: Low and bright!!

Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Wed, 28 Apr 1999 01:53:28 -0500

Wayne Halley's "Low and Bright!!" object, and a similar sighting 
in England the night before that was posted to the newsgroup by 
Paul Telco, appear to me to have been the soon-to-decay Cosmos 
808 Rk (08755, 76-24B).  (Alan Pickup's SatEvo Decay List #75 
predicts that it will decay on May 5.)  

This is one to watch, if you have a pass!  Tuesday night (early 
Wednesday UTC), one orbit after Wayne's pass, this one caught 
me by surprise even though I had a timely prediction -- which 
happened to be on the next page of my printouts.  This object
was definitely very bright and, due to its low height above the 
surface, very fast!  (I'm kind of wondering about the intrinsic 
magnitude of this object [and other Vostoks?], since its 
observed magnitude of about +0 on my pass was at least a full 
magnitude brighter than predicted, on a very-near-zenith pass.)

For those who don't know -- for keeping up with objects with 
rapidly changing elsets, there are Alan Pickup's posts here, 
as well as his elset files.  For all decaying objects he has:

 http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/dklist.tle or
 http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/dklist.zip

For selected objects -- major decayers, "special", and newly 
launched:

 http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/select.tle or
 http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/select.zip

Also, Mike McCants has elset files, updated daily, for 
"high-drag" and for recently launched objects:

ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/highdrag.zip (< 1K)
ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/highdrg2.zip (~ 20K)
ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/thirty.zip 

And of course Mike also posts the weekly OIG reports here.

Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA