Rob Matson wrote: >A search through ALLDAT quickly revealed the culprit: >Shijian 4 Long March 3A, 94-010C, #22997 >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! Yes, I have 11 obs of 22997, 94 10C in my files. I noted a period of 11 seconds in 1996 increasing to 20 seconds in May, 1997 and then decreasing to 9.5 seconds in July, 1997. My last record is a period of 13.8 seconds in October, 1999. Does the tumble period change because the air drag is affecting it? >magnitude (90-degree phase, 1000-km) is an amazing +2.2! Yes, this matches the intrinsic magnitude that I have assigned to it. Now the question is: is the new Long March 3A really brighter that this? Ron Lee wrote in a post yesterday: >Subject: Beidou 1B LM-3A rkt obs & period, 3 Jan 2001 >Magnitude about 6.5 at a range of 5900 km. Standard mag = 3 >Is this standard magnitude brighter than usual for a typical upper >stage rocket? I wrote Ron back that I thought the answer was "yes", but now I'm not so sure. It (26644, 00 82B) sure was bright when I watched it last week. But perhaps it was at a smaller range than usual. Only 4000 miles. So perhaps these two are comparable. How do you compensate for the phase angle for a cylinder that might have greater specular reflection than its diffuse reflection? Yes, there are a lot of interesting objects up there above 4000 miles. See Jason Hatton's description of the Long March: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/1668/cz-3.htm He says the LM-3A is 8.8 meters long and 3 meters in diameter. 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 : Thu Jan 04 2001 - 16:00:13 PST