Hi all, On the morning of July 5 UTC, I observed #17256, Cosmos 1278 deb on 2 consecutive passes. This object originated from the self-destruction of #12547, Cosmos 1278 in December 1986. It can be seen with binoculars flashing at a regular rate but with irregular maxima. On the first pass, the brightest maximum was around m +3.5 and was seen naked eye. But for most of this 30 deg. elevation pass, it was flashing to mag +7 to inv. On the second pass, maxima were at around m +5 with minima around m +8 to 9. I timed the period on this pass at 0.72 sec based on 30 cycles. On the positional side, on its first pass, it was 1 min 16 sec late and on the second, 36 sec late using Alan's predicted elset : Cosmos 1278 deb E 3308 x 108 km 1 17256U 81058E 00187.05226111 .52020749 54251-1 25880-2 0 98199 2 17256 62.7664 159.4380 1978156 196.4393 156.0987 11.94019306100894 Here are the coordinates : Pass 1 : 04:02:43.3 UTC ± 0.5 sec AD 01h20m50s dec +54d44m Pass 2 : 06:04:46.5 UTC ± 0.5 sec AD 21h14m30s dec +64d36m Observation site : 45.8681 N, 72.5133 W, 75 m Cheers, Dan -- Daniel Deak Drummondville, Québec COSPAR site 1746 : 45.8537°N, 72.4857°W, 90 m., UTC-5:00 E-mail : dan.deak@obsat.com ICQ : 52770063 Site en francais sur les satellites: French-language satellite web site : http://www.obsat.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Jul 05 2000 - 00:31:35 PDT