Incredible USA 86 pass

Ed Cannon (edcannonutaustin@netscape.net)
30 Jul 99 03:59:55 CDT

No one will believe this, but I'll send it in anyway.  
I was trying to find USA 86 (22251, 92-83A), for which 
a near-zenith pass was predicted.  Suddenly I noticed 
a very bright flare and clicked my stopwatch, and 
clicked, and clicked.  It was at about 2:56:38-41 UTC 
29 July, and its magnitude was possibly as bright as 
-1. Then it remained at one-power for some time, and 
then it flared even more brightly, to about -2 I'd 
estimate.  The clicks for this one were at about 
2:57:19-21.  It dimmed down but remained at gradually 
fading one-power for another while.  Then I clicked 
when it was at about the same altitude as Kochab 
(beta UMi); the time was about 2:58:51, so I believe 
that it was about 40 seconds late.  Then nine seconds 
later it flared for a third time!  This one was to 
about +0 and also lasted about two seconds.  Later I 
checked to see if there were any other obvious 
candidates for this pass besides USA 86, but I didn't 
find one.  Location:  30.3068N, 97.7267W, 150 m.

That was quite a bit better than the previous night's 
anomalous pass of Cosmos 1220 (12054, 80-89A), which 
became at least as bright as +1 and was brighter than 
+2 for much of its pass.  

But the re-entry of the space shuttle was the best, of 
course -- by far!  Afterwards, I saw video on three of 
our four major network stations (besides KVUE 24 that 
Sue mentioned but which I did not see), and I have 
found that another one, KXAN 36, has the story online:

 http://www.kxan.com/99/July/27/shuttle_land.html

The .ram file on that page is for a story five minutes 
and 13 seconds in length, and when I gave it a try I
got a message that my bandwidth or CPU weren't 
sufficient to support my viewing the file.

Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
(The Netscape address is temporary -- e-mail problems
with my regular address.)


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