As Ed Cannon posted, he spotted flashes from TDF-1 about 1:48UT Feb 9 from BCRC (30.31N, 97.86W). I watched it through my 8 inch telescope for a little over 11 minutes. The initial pattern was a primary flash (called A) and a secondary flash (called B) separated by about 16.4 seconds. Over a few minutes time, A became fainter and B became brighter. After about 3 minutes, a new flash (called C) appeared about 0.3 seconds before B. A continued to decline in brightness and B was brightest. After about another 3 minutes, C became the brightest and B became fainter. A was visible only as a 10th magnitude tumble. Over the next 4 minutes, C gradually decreased to about 7th magnitude. At this point I decided the show was over and stopped watching. So it would seem that reflections from 3 different solar panels are being observed and that each panel rises to a maximum over a period of about 4 minutes and then falls back to invisibility over about 4 minutes. Time to dust off the tape recorder. :-) I agree that the flashes appear to be 12 minutes later each day. The timed period of Feb 6 was 33.00, the timed period last night was 32.71 seconds. This difference of 0.29 seconds is "not a mistake". 88- 98 A 00-02-06 01:26 MM 528.0 0.3 16 33.00 88- 98 A 00-02-09 01:59:36.9 MM 457.9 0.2 14 32.71 Alcir Carra wrote: >So, the >question is: the one-power flashes may be visible at different times for >observations at different locations? Yes. Mike McCants ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Feb 09 2000 - 07:07:35 PST