While waiting for the next (in-shadow) pass of the decaying GPS Delta Rk (23834, 96-19B), due in about 15 minutes, I decided to report a spectacular binocular flasher that I observed last night, Intelsat 4A6 Rk (10779): 78- 35 B 00-04-27 02:23:44 EC 100.1 0.2 22 4.55 F'F'f'mag +4->inv The flash pattern, truncating the times to integers just for simplicity, was 4-1-3 4-1-3 etc. seconds, all three about equal brightness. So I wasn't completely certain whether to report its period as 4.55 or 9.10 seconds. The maxima are very fast and some might have been +3.5. Didn't see any sign of 23834 on the previous pass, which was predicted to go very near our zenith. It's several miles lower this time, but still in shadow. Next orbit is in sunlight but in twilight also. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Thu Apr 27 2000 - 02:37:43 PDT