Cees Bassa sent me the positions that reduced from his photos of two objects from the launch of NROL-65. 99066 13 740A 4171 G 20130828192053736 17 25 2254497+111506 37 S 99066 13 740A 4171 G 20130828192059697 17 25 2256784+121339 37 S 99066 13 740A 4171 G 20130828192106706 17 25 2259528+132258 37 S 99067 13 740B 4171 G 20130828192100486 17 25 2254301+113284 37 S 99067 13 740B 4171 G 20130828192109706 17 25 2257760+130290 37 S Object 99066 was leading 99067. My guess is that the fainter, trailing object 13740B, is the payload, and the brighter leading object is the second stage of the Delta 4H. Here are updated elements fit to 13740B: 1 79502U 13240.80636574 .00019623 00000-0 18973-3 0 07 2 79502 97.9398 305.0356 0517992 211.7239 199.4683 14.80970130 03 Epoch is the time of the observation. I adjusted only RAAN and mean anomaly to take out most of the time and track error relative the pre-launch version of 79502. That almost certainly is an over-simplification, but should suffice to obtain additional observations, which will yield more accurate elements. I expect the second stage to have de-orbited over the Pacific roughly 25 min after Cees imaged it. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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