Ed Cannon and I went to the AAS "dark site" northwest of Austin on Saturday night and I found the Rainbow 1 Centaur about midnight CDT in my 8 inch telescope. Rainbow 1 Centaur Rocket 1 27853U 03033B 03213.73253961 -.00000020 00000-0 00000+0 0 60 2 27853 17.8185 118.9012 6028017 2.5112 359.6105 2.11265735 319 It was about altitude 29, azimuth 262 at a range of 12000 miles. It tumbled to about magnitude 8.5 with a period of about 74 seconds. The minima were about magnitude 12. Flashes were seen to about magnitude 7.5 or 8 in the middle of every other minimum. The period of these was 148 seconds. I assume that a flat end plate at one end of the Centaur was reflecting sunlight. The HighFly intrinsic magnitude would be about 1.0. Ed saw quite a few objects "one-power" under these dark skies and a number of the star party observers were impressed with the easily visible "flying triangle" NOSS 2-2 objects as they rose from 40 degrees up in the north and went into the Earth's shadow just before reaching culmination high in the north-northeast. They were about magnitude 3.5 at a range of 800 miles. Mike McCants Austin, Tx ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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