It appears that Gerry Smerchanski has discovered a new GEO flasher. Below are the circumstances. I also observed the possible last half of the flashing period around 03:37-03:40 UT on 18 April 2000 from Falcon, CO. I was unable to ID the satellite (program input error). Mike McCants ID'ed it as TVSat 1: TVSat 1 1 18570U 87095A 00107.90581788 .00000031 00000-0 10000-3 0 7888 2 18570 8.3377 44.7161 0065198 243.0888 116.2131 0.98915976 34316 I found no entries for it in the PPAS database. I will attempt tonight to get an accurate period and flash interval. This might be another Superbird-A challenge for Rob or Bjoern. At this point, I cannot offer much guidance on flashing time for other locations or as days go by. Perhaps someone can give a general idea if it will occur later/sooner as a function of longitude and delta days. Ron Lee > >Hello Ron, >Yes, the RA and dec ( I just remeasured it off my chart and dec. was closer >to 2 degrees N rather than 2.5 as stated) were for 10:25 Central daylight >time. I was looking for Pallas and I know that area fairly well these >days. The flashes occurred right in the middle of a fairly distinctive >quadrilateral. I'm at longitude 97.25 W and 50.383 N. Got any ideas? >Thanks for the interest. > Gerry >> >> >Sunday night at 10:20-10:30 CDT, while looking for Pallas with >> >binoculars, I noticed a brief flash of light off to the east at RA 8h >> >25' and +2.5dec. Thinking it was a statellite tumbling through I >> >ignored it but twenty or so seconds later it flashed again in the same >> >spot. It repeated this about eight times, flash intervals were 21-23 >> >seconds at about mag three, with the last few times getting fainter, >> >then nothing. No movement was detected throughout. Seeing as this is >> >close to the celestial equator I assume it must be a geostationary >> >satellite. Have others seen this? Is there other explanations? >> > >> >Gerry ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Tue Apr 18 2000 - 13:29:25 PDT