Telstar 401 (93-077A, 22927) episodes for three evenings: 2001 Jan 16 2:53:27 to 3:25:28 UTC - 38 minutes total 2001 Jan 17 2:44:03 to 3:00:03 UTC - 16 minutes total (clouds) 2001 Jan 20 1:42:20 to 2:12:20 UTC - 30 minutes total Last night Mike McCants and I both saw the brightest flash, with brightness comparable to Rigel (alpha ORI, +0.3), at about 1:52:20 UTC. At least seven flashes were visible without magnification. I think that the time of the last flash seen is the most reliable for comparisons of when episodes occurred. On Jan 9, the last flash was at about 5:07:08, which works out to the episodes being almost 16 minutes earlier per night. So I plan to start looking, if the weather permits, at about 1:20 (7:20 pm CST) tonight if not a bit earlier. (It's about to overlap LEO time.) I've been told that on any given evening, it will flash earlier farther to the north of our latitude. As usual, towards the end of the episode the magnitudes of the flashes alternated brighter and fainter. PPAS report: 93- 77 A 02-01-20 02:12:20 EC 1800.0 0.2 15 120.00 +0.5->inv TDF 2 (90-063A, 20705) was visible in my binoculars last night -- for the first time in a long time. This one drifts to the west fairly rapidly from night to night. Some of the maxima were very quick double flashes. It has been as bright as +4 in the past, and it has one of the shortest flash periods of the flashing geosynchs, about 22 seconds. PPAS report: 90- 63 A 02-01-20 03:42:51 EC 374.6 0.3 17 22.03 +6.5->inv some doubles ASC 1 (85-076C, 15994), another flashing geosynch, only 2.5 minutes between flashes! PPAS report: 85- 76 C 02-01-20 02:58:03 EC 1217.0 0.5 8 152.1 +4.0->inv Iridium 920 (24871, 97-034C) did some bright flashes. Mike found both of the 02-001 objects again, after a couple of nights of unfavorable weather. We also were able to observe 90006; I saw some of its flashes with my 10x50 binoculars, but generally it requires a telescope. It's a very interesting irregular fairly rapid flasher. Mike suggested that I look at 82-041C (13172; called "OPS 6553" in the Satellite Situation Report). In the quicksat.mag file it's called "KH 9-17 Caps". It's a neat fast flasher that's easy in binoculars -- at least it was last night. 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 : Sun Jan 20 2002 - 05:10:23 EST