Timed three cycles of Insat 2D at 3:58:54 to 4:03:17 on August 21 UTC. This is a "near" geosynch that's drifting something like 27 degrees to the east from night to night (something more than 3 degrees per hour, so it will be south of Europe in just a few days). The flash period was about 87.7 seconds. The four flashes were at least +4.5. Mike McCants observed one flash the following night, quite a while earlier. I failed to find it last night (Aug 23 UTC), possibly because it flashed before dark (?). Conditions were not good (100% humidity -- for a while fogging up my glasses when I looked through my binoculars!), but I did find Intelsat 512 later along with a number of LEOs. Insat 2D 1 24820U 97027B 00231.73490686 -.00000121 00000-0 00000+0 0 2863 2 24820 2.2471 85.7207 0340024 205.3968 153.2532 1.04791447 12280 Monday night (local, Aug 22 UTC) I observed one flash of Tele-X (89-027A, 19919) without magnification, and it was at least as bright as Altair (about +0.8). I plan to report some absolute flash times on this one. I looked for it for a long time last night but didn't find it -- probably rested my neck at the wrong time.... Observing location was 30.3068N, 97.7267W, 150m. 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 : Wed Aug 23 2000 - 02:26:34 PDT