Ted wrote: >On Aug 02 at 03:36 UTC, -6 min / +10 min, I looked for >Ed Cannon's UNID of 2005 Jul 02, near the following orbit, >but did not see it: > >1 31697U 05697A 05211.06255680 .00000324 00000-0 29078-2 0 15 >2 31697 27.5419 185.4013 6847259 147.3464 284.7073 2.65133865 389 Imagine my chagrin when I didn't see it there either! Weather conditions here weren't very good, so I wasn't sure what to think, but Ted's negative observation confirms that it wasn't there to see. I also didn't see it at predictions for mean motion equal to 2.29. However, I also had later predictions for mean motion equal to 2.58 (36 revs) -- not very easy, in the west. In spite of that and the weather I went back to the Ney Museum (30.307N, 97.727W, 150m) to try again. In that part of the sky I could see stars to about +6.5, and (Hopefully this is not wishful thinking!) I thought that I saw an eastbound object for several seconds and clicked very near the following position (could be a false alarm): 2005-08-02 05:37:44.7 -- RA 16:40.8, Dec. +12.4 (epoch 2000) Here are the two MM=2.58 elsets for which I had predictions: Ed050730 36 RMS=0.33 MM=2.57969620 31248 x 910 km 1 39690U 05697A 05211.07454544 .00000320 00000-0 18416-1 0 15 2 39690 27.5812 186.6520 6754611 139.1769 298.6535 2.57969620 371 Unk050702 2.58 1 89985U 05210.98940398 .00000311 00000-0 39425-2 0 06 2 89985 27.5425 185.6488 6884554 146.2772 218.9054 2.57968809 04 With this unknown, I've certainly learned about the slippery nature of geosynchronous transfer orbits, in terms of trying to determine the elements from repeated similar observations. I very much appreciate the efforts of the at least two orbital analysts who've been helping to try to see it again and nail it down. STS-114. Sure hope the weather cooperates here for the passes in the last mornings of the mission. I also really hope that they don't pull on those gapfillers -- at least not very hard. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 02 2005 - 04:03:02 EDT