Gorizont 23 not seen, Raduga 27 seen !

Kurt Jonckheere (kjon@mail.dma.be)
Tue, 20 Jul 99 16:23:54 PDT

hello all,

on Friday and Sunday evening I was able to observe some high satellites.

Because Gorizont 23 is back over Europe, I tried in on both evenings,
with a limiting magnitude through my scope of about 10.5.  Each time
nothing was detected. (Friday July 16, between 21h30m and 21h40m UT
and Sunday July 18, between 22h45 and 22h55m).

When I was moving my scope to the position of Gorizont 23 on Sunday,
I suddenly noticed a short flash about 1 degree before Gorizont 23.
After more than a minute (so more than Gorizont's 50 seconds) another
flash was noticed and so on...
I checked the predictions and immediately saw that Raduga 27 = 91-14 A
= 21132 was back, after Jason Hatton "lost" it about one month ago
because too faint.  It was flashing clearly to mag +8.
More observations (from other places) are needed to find out how the
rotation axis is behaving.
[Observation made from Ostend, 2d 55m E, 51d 22m N].

In contrast with Gorizont 23, which has been accelerating with a perfectly
linear rate, the acceleration of Raduga 27 slows down (see the data below).
The flashing period was going down with about 0.39 s/day during May,
0.30 s/day during June and now with about 0.23 s/day.

91- 14 A 99-05-09 21:02:17.5 JPH1785.6 0.1  20 89.28  A'A' mag+5->inv vm
91- 14 A 99-05-19 21:14:38.6 JPH1280.5 0.2  15 85.37  A'A' mag+6->inv
91- 14 A 99-05-23 21:40      JPH1342.4 0.2  16 83.90  A'A' mag+6->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-04 20:44:42   JPH 957.5 0.2  12 79.79  A'A' mag+6->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-08 20:45:02.8 JPH1177.9 0.2  15 78.52  A'A' mag+6->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-10 20:49:09.5 JPH1558.4 0.2  20 77.92  F'or A' vm mag+6->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-11 21:05:29.9 JPH2794.8 0.2  36 77.63  A'or F' mag+6->inv vm
91- 14 A 99-06-11 22:39:56.5 JPH2483.8 0.2  32 77.62  F'or A' vm mag+8->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-13 20:46:40.3 JPH1387.0 0.2  18 77.05  F'or A' vm mag+8->inv
91- 14 A 99-06-16 20:41:25.9 JPH 914.1 0.2  12 76.18  F'F mag+9->inv
91- 14 A 99-07-18 22:36      KJ 1239.7 0.1  18 68.87  FF, mag +8->inv

happy observing,



Kurt Jonckheere (kjon@mail.dma.be)