I have taken several nice photos of bright satellites on 28 Mar 2011. I was then unaware of the Seasat-L info about Lacrosse 2, while Lacrosse 2 was one of my targets ot that night. I expected it would pass near Alpha Auriga from 19h49m20s to 19h 49m30s UT (according to the chart of Heavens-Above). No satellite was visible to the naked eye, nevertheless I took as planned a 15-sec exposure of a wide field including a large part of Auriga constellation. After careful examination of the star field I was amazed to have recorded nothing across it (even a faint satellite at mag 6 would have been easy to spot though). I commented this photo with : "unexplainably failed attempt at Lacrosse 2". Due to the fact I was taking a photo of ERBS in Leo at 19h48.0m, I began watching for Lacrosse 2 pass just few seconds before 19h49.0m. Alain Figer, near Paris, at: Lon: 2°.128 E Lat: 48°.673 N ; 170m a.s.l. ======================================== Message du : 01/04/2011 De : "Marco Langbroek " <marco.langbroek@wanadoo.nl> A : "Ted Molczan" <ssl3molcz@rogers.com>, "satelliet lijst (SeeSat)" <SeeSat-L@satobs.org> Copie à : Sujet : Re: Lacrosse 2 may have been de-orbited I did a photographic search this evening (1 April), doing a continuous shoot between 19:44:00 and 19:53:00 UTC of an 18 x 24 degree area centered on the nominal position for 19:47:30 UTC. The pattern was: 10 seconds exposure, 10 seconds pause, and next 10 seconds exposure, etc... No sign of Lacrosse 2. Lacrosse 4 on the other hand, passing through the same area around 19:46 UTC, was captured on several images. So Lacrosse 2 indeed is gone, unless it passed before 19:44 UTC. - Marco Op 1-4-2011 20:32, Ted Molczan schreef: > I now believe that Lacrosse 2 (91017A / 21147) made at a major orbit manoeuvre, probably to de-orbit, in the early hours > of 2011 March 26 UTC. > > Pierre Neirinck reports that he observed Lacrosse 2 on Mar 25 at 20:19 UTC. It was on a near overhead pass, and reached > magnitude 2. He was unable to identify his reference stars, so had no positional data to report. It was a no-show for > him on March 28, but he allowed little margin for early arrival, so if it had lowered its orbit, it could have passed a > bit before he began observing. > > Another observer has reported off-list, that Lacrosse 2 was a no-show on March 26, to a high degree of confidence. > Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20110402/7a27da53/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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