Dan sent this me and others to ID...assuming same geo location as me, I'd like some help with ID. I was out observing last night and was looking at M42 at about 6:45 and noticed a flashing strobe light just above it. My first reaction was it was an airplane, however it was moving extremely slowly from South to North. By my estimate it was moving at about 1 arc second per second. It was definitely a strobe light as its rise and fall were extremely sharp pulsing at 7 second intervals. My best guess as to its magnitude was about a 5 or 6 as it was very bright in my 8", but could not see it naked eye. The skies in town last night were about a mag. 4. This object was moving far too slowly to be a fixed wing aircraft. My next thought was it was a satellite in high earth orbit which would fit its apparent velocity. I cannot however think of any good reason a satellite in HEO would want to waste power running a strobe light. It's not as if there is a lot of piloted traffic in that airspace that it would be trying to warn not to run into it. It most likely was some sort of weather balloon. I am not sure as to whether they run strobes to warn off aircraft or not. It would make sense, but would also use up power as well. Does anyone know if that is the case? If not a balloon, then I am open to speculation as to what it might have been. DanL Brad Young TULSA 1 COSPAR 8336 36.1397N, 95.9838W, 205m ASL ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 07 2007 - 13:00:19 EST