Strober thread: airplane or sat?
Jeffrey C. Hunt (jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com)
Mon, 31 Jul 1995 12:09:58 -0400 (EDT)
Walter Nissen writes (in part) recently:
While I was observing the steady light and steady course of
C* 1908 6.0 2.0 0.0 5.9
1 18748U 88001A 95200.50608565 +.00000172 +00000-0 +17530-4 0 03024
2 18748 082.5093 201.1607 0017227 252.6462 107.2873 14.84617757406985
at 950729 085618 from -81.8637, 41.3735, 256m, it appulsed an object which
was moving very much slower along a more level path, but generally in the
same direction as C* 1908, and strobing with a fairly regular period of
somewhere in the vicinity of 2s. The closest approach of the two objects
was about 2 or 3 degrees, roughly. I calculate C* 1908 at 3h 21.9, +22.9
(2000.0) at that moment.
NOSS 5 (C) 0.3 0.9 2.4 8.1
1 14143U 83056 C 95147.07491127 .00000022 00000-0 30324-4 0 05
2 14143 63.4130 17.4078 0310000 3.9916 356.0084 13.40266233 07
might have been the object but it was in a steeper course and would have
had to be a minute early. ...Could someone with a large file of elsets
identify the slower object? ...I have a suspicion that this may have
been a distant airplane and would like to know better how to calibrate
my airplane/satellite discriminator.
________________________________________________________________________
My reply is as follows:
Walter,
That was flight 345 from Cleveland to Charlotte, N.C.:-) !
Seriously though, I could not find an exact match for what you described.
I ran simulations on all 4600+ elements maintained on my program. Please
don't tell my wife. She thought I was doing something constructive on the
PC over the weekend. Actually you gave me a good excuse to run all the data
I have, as I have never done that before. I found several problems
with my database as a result and of course, a lot of decayed elements.
Below are listed a couple of possibilities, but they didn't match exactly,
as neither did 14143, as you mentioned.
Three additional possibilities were 12331, 19445, and 6845 for the site
and time mentioned. What's your assessment?
73069 A
1 06845U 73069 A 95200.56457166 -.00000001 00000-0 10000-3 0 4142
2 06845 073.9955 221.7078 0028427 124.4724 235.9018 12.48477984993347
78014 E
1 12331U 78014 E 95200.21591421 .00000287 00000-0 40448-3 0 07528
2 12331 064.7631 247.1868 1838167 275.3888 064.1137 10.87670041689278
88076 A
1 19445U 88076 A 95198.49344730 -.00000763 00000-0 10000-3 0 7436
2 19445 67.4596 234.5570 6315459 274.9084 20.6930 2.00454867 50398
Best Regards, Jeff Hunt <jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com>