Steve LaLumondiere wrote: >I spotted what may have been Ed and Mike's UNID several days ago. The maxima >from the object I saw were 10.5 sec apart. I also remember that I could see >quite a few faint minima (spacing between these was less than 1 second) >between the brighter maxima. Ed and I watched the new unid for over an hour last night and Steve's description fits. At one time near the zenith last night, we saw a sequence of 2 fainter flashes followed by a bright flash several times in a row. The bright flash gradually grew brighter, reaching perhaps 4th magnitude (at a range of about 7000 miles about 4:47UT). Then it grew fainter and the pattern changed. Even at 13000 miles an hour later, it was easily visible in the 8 inch. This visibility does not seem to match object 990907. The latter seems to be intrinsically smaller and fainter and becomes very difficult at larger ranges. I would guess that object 90096 would be easily visible at apogee flashing to mag 10.5. But these really are specular flashes from a flat reflector. They are not like the flashes from a Centaur rocket. >Using SkyMap, I convinced myself that I had >seen Molniya 1-90. Let me try to convince you otherwise. This Molniya was closer to 90096 as seen from California than as seen from here (10 minutes time or 15 degrees altitude at declination 0 where Ed first spotted object 90096), but your description matches object 90096 and it really is a different object. Mike McCants Austin, Tx ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sun Apr 09 2000 - 11:00:26 PDT