I saw ERS-2 (95-021A, 23560) flare last night to one-power magnitude when it was predicted by Quicksat to be +6.5 to +7.5. Time was about 5:06 UTC. My cousin and I saw a -2 flare in the same vicinity at about 2:50; that seems very consistent with MOS 1-B (90-013A, 20478 -- no longer operational, I believe). The observing site location last night was Dripping Springs, Texas: 30.188N, 98.088W, 350m. It seems to me that many of the Earth-observing satellites in sunsynchonous orbits may flare from time to time. (Of course, any payload may flare sometimes.) After last night, I was thinking of a new branch of our hobby -- spotting flaring payloads in Ursa Major (northern hemisphere, of course!). Besides ERS-2, I saw three or four others. (Admittedly a couple were only visible in binoculars, as I was scanning the area after seeing a couple of them, but they were still much brighter than predicted.) I wonder about the geometry of these. From here, these are all northbound evening passes in the northwest -- in the general direction of the Sun's azimuth, I believe. Some are quite low in the sky. I've seen SPOT 4 and SPOT 5, Envisat, etc., do the same sort of thing, all in the general vicinity of Ursa Major (during our local summer). Iridiums 911 (97-030G, 24842) and 914 (97-030A, 24836) both did very nice flashes last night, seen by cousins and me. USA 136 Centaur Rk (97-068B, 25035). Using the elset generated by Int2, I did see it last night but did not manage to get a positional measurement. It was not hard to see in the 10x50s. The 1.2-second tumble period really helps! Here's a new Int2-generated elset for tonight: USA 136 Cent r 8.6 3.0 0.0 3.5 v 20 1 25035U 97068B 02230.65970412 -.00001059 00000-0 00000+0 0 04 2 25035 64.1577 125.7187 7248331 249.6355 .0000 2.02935203 06 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://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Aug 18 2002 - 20:14:13 EDT