Mike Bevan <mike@bevan20.freeserve.co.uk> writes >... >As a naked eye observer only I tend to observe in the evenings and night >only. >Unusually I happened to be up at 04:55 BST (UTC+1) this morning and observed >Mir passing from SW to Elev.59° SSE to E a brilliant sight. >However at 05:08 I caught sight of another object travelling approx. WNW to >Elev.80°N to E (approximately) at about mag. 2 flaring to 0. Very quick 3-4 >mins. to complete the arc. >To me it was obviously a satellite which was slowly rotating. >I cannot find any satellite in Mcants alldat element files nor on the >Heavens-above pages to match. >Can anybody throw any light on this sighting. Very probably the decaying Proton rocket that launched SESat late on the 17th UTC. I show it passing from W to E, reaching 75 deg in the N for you at 04:07:35 UTC at a height of only 180 km. The published elset for that rev is: SESat Proton r 169 x 162 km 1 26244U 00019B 00110.15537356 .06889041 12433-4 48572-3 0 190 2 26244 51.6390 165.2111 0004994 290.2644 69.7745 16.40208846 214 It decayed late this afternoon, UK time - I be following up with a Decay Watch note a s a p. Alan -- Alan Pickup | COSPAR 2707: 55d53m48.7s N 3d11m51.2s W 156m asl Edinburgh | Tel: +44 (0)131 477 9144 Fax: +44 (0)870 0520750 Scotland | SatEvo page: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Apr 19 2000 - 11:49:49 PDT