Hi All, While timing a geosynch flasher last night, I spotted a dim, high-altitude satellite moving slowly through my binocular field of view. I checked my watch for two star appulses in the hopes of later discovering its identity. It was slowly pulsating in brightness by at most one visual magnitude, probably somewhere between mag 6 and mag 7. Unfortunately, I had no means of timing it since my stopwatch was already occupied with USA 39 (report coming). I think the period was less than 15 seconds, though. A search through ALLDAT quickly revealed the culprit: Shijian 4 Long March 3A, 94-010C, #22997 Using the following elset, it was 5 seconds late: Shijian 4 Long March 3A 1 22997U 94010C 01003.09112912 .00170427 -97414-7 23302-2 0 9897 2 22997 27.5769 242.3988 5763131 52.7748 347.1025 4.51057247 80726 I acquired it with 8 x 56 binoculars at a range of 7200 km. Assigning a magnitude of +6.5 to the obs, the standard magnitude (90-degree phase, 1000-km) is an amazing +2.2! I have an even better pass tonite (predicted mag +5.2 using new standard magnitude), so I will attempt to time the oscillation period. Ed and Mike: this same pass is also good for your location tonite starting after 8:30pm CST. You should be able to follow it for over an hour. --Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Thu Jan 04 2001 - 13:41:07 PST