All: To echo Don's report, I've had some great sightings of Superbird tthis week, with the one on Friday evening by far the best to date. I was out observing faint galaxies with my 14.5-inch Dob from our club's "close-in" dark-sky site at Mickie Gordon Regional Park near Middleburg, VA. I'd been at it for half an hour when I noticed it was approaching the time for Superbird to do its thing. I pointed the telescope to the area, looked in the finder, saw a flash to about 5th mag, and locked the big 'scope on it. Well, the next flash was the 1.5 mag "blast" Don mentioned. Damn near blinded me, and prompted a "sotto voce" epithet that wasn't so "sotto". There were several other club members out there who immediately wanted to know what had gotten me so excited. I pointed out the region near Gamma Virginis, and we were quickly rewarded with another bright flash that easily outshone Gamma Vir. For the next several minutes we enjoyed the show. I watched the satellite thru the big 'scope for several minutes, and noted in my logbook that it had a very complex light curve. In addition to the bright primary flashes spaced 23 seconds apart, the secondary flashes between each primary seemed to be about 2 magnitudes fainter consistently through the observation period. In adition, the "background" level of the satellite seemed to vary sinusoidally over a range of about 0.25 magnitudes during each cycle. I would have made a more conscious effort to record this with accurate timings, but the bird drifted right over NGC 4666, a bright, edge-on galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, and NGC 4668, a dimmer "companion" jist to the southeast of the brighter one. Way cool...even my die-hard deep-sky buddies were impressed by this one! Saturday evening I watched from the front yard in Alexandria, in the glare of the ol' streetlight. I found it without any problems in my 7X50's, then quickly picked it up with the naked eye. The flashes weren't as bright this night, with only a few equal to Gamma Vir. Unfortunately, after 3 naked eye flashes, the clouds roared in. Still, this was the first time I'd seen it unaided from the front yard. I'm looking forward to seeing some more this week. Cheers, Geoff +===========================================================+ | Geoff Chester grc@usno.navy.mil Public Affairs Office | | http://www.usno.navy.mil US Naval Observatory | | 3450 Massachusetts Avenue, NW | | (202) 762-1489 (FAX) Washington, DC 20392 | |-----------------------------------------------------------| | "Each passing hour brings the Solar System 43,000 miles | | closer to the globular cluster M13 in Hercules; yet there | | are still some misfits who insist there's no such thing | | as progress!" -- Ransom K. Fern | +===========================================================+ > -----Original Message----- > From: Mir16609@aol.com [mailto:Mir16609@aol.com] > Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 01:43 > To: SeeSat-L@blackadder.lmsal.com > Cc: ppas@blackadder.lmsal.com > Subject: Obs 31 March + 1 April + TiPS > > <--snip--> > Superbird A was true to Rob Marson's predictions. Peak > flashing (phase > shift) was apparent at about 03:06 UT, 1 April and 03:08, 2 > April. The 1 > April (UTC) flashes were particularly bright. Some were > clearly visible at > 1x - about +1.5 mag. One double flash was observed on the 1 > April (UTC) obs. > <--snip--> ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 03 2000 - 07:57:04 PDT