RE: unid LEO

From: Ted Molczan (molczan@rogers.com)
Date: Wed Jul 07 2004 - 22:04:58 EDT

  • Next message: paul: "obs 08jul 04190 8305"

    Ed Cannon wrote:
    
    > Thank you very much to Ted and Björn for your assistance and 
    > feedback on the unid LEO!
    > 
    > I'm quite confident of the revised prime position (not perfect, 
    > but very good) because of a distinctive cup asterism that the 
    > unid traversed, and I'm also certain of the time:
    > 
    > 2004-07-04 03:58:34.5 RA 21:41:51, Dec +71.2 (2000)
    > 
    > So as not to put all of the details on the list, I've put a
    > plain text file with the chronology and some commentary here:
    > 
    > http://wnt.cc.utexas.edu/~ecannon/20040704.txt
    
    Thank you for providing additional details. One of your timings is of 90050C /
    20691 "NOSS 2-1 leader by star". I found that 90050C should have appulsed a mag
    5.3 star, within 0.047 deg, and 0.062 s of the reported time. I found no similar
    close appulse 173.32 s earlier, so it appears that your timings are accurate.
    
    As for your UNID, my guess is it could have been an unusually bright pass of one
    of the many normally faint pieces of operational debris from the NOSS program.
    If so, then it would be almost impossible to recover, even if we could develop
    an accurate search orbit.
    
    A number of past UNIDs have proven to be good finds, so it certainly is worth
    reporting them.
    
    Ted Molczan
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive:  
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jul 07 2004 - 22:09:21 EDT