The flash period for ETS 6 (23230, 94-056A, Kiku 6) was just under 8.5 seconds on Feb. 12. Here's a PPAS report of flashes during the second bright episode that evening: 94- 56 A 02-02-12 04:55:51 EC 431.3 0.2 51 8.457 +1.5->inv Only some of those were as bright as +1.5, of course, at about those times I mentioned in my earlier message. Weather permitting I will sure try to see it do the same again on Feb. 15, i.e., Thurs PM Feb 14 Texas time. (It does five orbits in about 71 hours, 49 minutes, as its mean motion is about 1.6709.) Observing challenge for folks with scopes -- the three Sirius Radio satellites: they are in 24-hour geosynchronous orbits, but with high inclination and definitely non-zero eccentricity. They are fairly large 3-axis-stabilized satellites with a pair of big solar panels. I would think they must flare sometimes. Here are elements lifted from Tony Beresford's glo10.txt file: SIRIUS-1 1 26390U 00035A 02039.57319389 .00000034 00000-0 10000-3 0 2991 2 26390 63.3282 279.1106 2681333 270.0672 59.7567 1.00274471 5912 SIRIUS-2 1 26483U 00051A 02039.23703031 -.00000027 00000-0 00000+0 0 2028 2 26483 63.3979 159.5904 2704743 269.0424 60.1876 1.00280427 5242 SIRIUS 3 1 26626U 00077A 02038.90560428 -.00000130 00000-0 00000+0 0 1922 2 26626 63.4718 39.1597 2708667 269.6736 59.5756 1.00275048 4370 They might be visible mostly from North America, but I'm not really sure about that. 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 : Wed Feb 13 2002 - 06:00:58 EST