Somebody on Twitter suggested that this could in fact be another object: 2017-014B, a Falcon 9 RB from the Echostar 23 launch (which should have reentered a day earlier accordig to a TIP, but indeed did have its orbital plane over Puerto Rico during the sighting). So I did some quick and rough astrometry on two frames from the footage (which was taken from Añasco, Puerto Rico). I measured the second, spectacularly fragmenting object in the footage. A resulting rough orbit fit gives orbital inclinations of 54.4-55.7 degrees (depending on which of the dispersing fragments I measure). This is close to the 53.2 degrees of Starlink and totally unlike the 22 degrees of the alternative object, the Falcon 9 rb. So we can rule out the RB: this definitely is one of the 40 Starlinks from the unfortunate 3 Feb launch currently reentering. These are the **very rough** circular fits I get. Ignore most of the orbital elements in them (they are largely meaningless with such a short arc), only look at the orbital inclination which should be reasonable defined: fragment 1 (leading fragment) 1 00000U 0000000 22038.27869213 0.00000073 00000-0 50000-4 0 05 2 00000 55.6668 157.1374 0014860 250.2538 130.6413 16.61253462 04 Fragment 2 1 00000U 0000000 22038.27869213 0.00000073 00000-0 50000-4 0 05 2 00000 55.5029 157.1166 0014919 250.9055 130.6717 16.69491107 04 fragment 3 1 00000U 0000000 22038.27869213 0.00000073 00000-0 50000-4 0 05 2 00000 54.3743 156.6094 0014850 249.3459 131.8165 16.60802863 08 - Marco ----- Dr Marco Langbroek - SatTrackCam Leiden, the Netherlands. e-mail: sattrackcam_at_langbroek.org launchtower: http://launchtower.langbroek.org Station (b)log: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com Twitter: _at_Marco_Langbroek ----- _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Wed Feb 09 2022 - 08:57:49 UTC
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