A few hours ago Orion 3 (25727, 99-024A) displayed at least four pretty bright flashes, the last one just a couple of degrees beneath the Moon. There might have been more, but I began looking a bit late. So I'm hoping that its passes for the next two or three nights might be as good as the ones a week or so ago. Its tumble/flash period seems to have accelerated from about 22.5 to about 22.0 seconds. NOSS 2-2 triplets were one-power again. Any theories on why they are doing this lately (around here at least) when they are usually +5 or fainter? (The previous night only one of them seemed that bright.) For folks in north Texas and southern Oklahoma (and maybe northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas?), you might look for Galileo IUS, as it's currently making very fast near- perigee passes over your area. The passes recently have been at an orbital height of about 120 miles (190 km). Last night from here in twilight at about 9:30 p.m. CDT (2:30 UTC) and only about 20 degrees above the northern horizon, it was at least +2 for part of the pass. Presumably it would be a lot brighter along I-20 (and maybe I-30)! As its mean motion is just under 5.5, it's doing very similar passes a little bit later every other evening, so the next one will be Friday (CDT). I believe that it's tumbling slowly, so if it's not very bright at first, keep watching in case it tumbles to a more favorable orientation for your location. IUS R/B(1) 1 20299U 89084C 00194.54176936 .00113197 46515-7 14683-2 0 5772 2 20299 34.1590 137.9587 5158738 90.5710 326.0384 5.49898342144888 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://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 13 2000 - 02:11:03 PDT