I was looking for an LEO in the SSW, and I saw some faint flashes (+7.0 at best?) from a very slow moving object going west to east. Fortunately it was in a location easy for me to determine, and Findsat identified it as Telstar 402 (94-058A, 23249). Its range was about 12,800 km when I saw it! I'm not sure it was as bright as +7. Here is a PPAS report: 94- 58 A 02-07-24 03:10:28.6 EC 114.9 0.3 37 3.10 +7.0->inv More Intelsat 512 (85-087A, 16101); brightest maybe +4.5. (Pretty good observing time for west coast of North America; sorry about the moonlight.) Just listing times of observations in hopes that someone somewhere else will observe it also! (Björn needs more data!) 2002/07/22 6:24:07.4 to 6:29:37.3 2002/07/23 6:36:23.0 to 6:41:52.1 2002/07/24 6:48:36.2 to 6:54:04.8 After missing TDF 2 (90-063A, 20705) for two nights, I managed to see a few flashes, 5:16:34.6 to 5:17:59.8 (today, July 24). So the episode ended about 39 minutes later than three nights ago. The first flash I saw (with my 10x50s) was at least +5.0. Meteor 3M-1 Rk (01-056F, 27006) is very interesting to watch (from here at 30 north, at least) when it's in the east, going south (evening passes). NOSS 2-1 triplets were visible without binoculars -- a southbound evening pass. I'm hoping for some passes without moonlight. The outlier was the brightest. They made my one-power total 19 objects for the evening! (And the first hour there was scattered cirrus.) IRS P2 (94-068A, 23323) has done at least one negative magnitude flash on almost every pass recently, but it's not very bright otherwise. USA 81 (92-023A, 21949) did a very nice pass last night -- more brightish flashes than usual, plus a nice +2 sparkling episode. Several of the Earth-observing satellites in sun-synch orbits (e.g., Envisat, SPOT 5, Landsat 7, CBERS 1) have been very bright recently when their passes have been in the vicinity of Ursa Major. Some other payloads (e.g., MSX, Okean-O, Meteor 1-31) have been very bright as they have risen in the south to southeast. Summer observing -- so many satellites, so little sleep. 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://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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