Tony Beresford wrote: > At 03:22 PM 8/07/2007, Greg Williams wrote: >> Coordinates of observation: 36.381801, -83.983054 >> Location: North of Lafollette, Tennessee >> Object traveling: South to North, towards Big Dipper >> Rate of flash: 7-8 seconds >> Altitude: 30 degrees at max (estimate) >> >> Time of observation: 11:05 - 11:07 PM Eastern (0304-0307Z) >> July 7, 2007 (July 8 zulu) >> >> >> I got the family out to watch after seeing 4 sats and meteors, and I >> credit my daughter with seeing the mystery object. It was to our >> west, going north. She said "I see one" and we all turned to look >> and saw nothing. She swore she saw it and we thought maybe it was a >> lightning bug (firefly for those outside the sticks :) ) and just as >> we were about to look away it came back and really flashed bright. A >> very bright magnitude similar to Jupiter just to the south. It went >> dark again and I counted "one one-thousand, two one-thousand" and it >> flashed again from nothing to bright at 7 seconds. It would start to >> become visible, and then flash, then dim. It did this 4 times that >> we saw. It faded out just below the big dipper as it traveled north. > Greg, Using a direction of 30 deg elevation bearing 270 and 0305UT in > Findsat > with time error 200 and position error 5 degrees i got quite a few > candidates. > ignoring debris and high satellites, i put the remaining thru > heavens-above > to sort out the direction > This left 10352 77087A > 11752 80 026C > 20262 89 080C > 27550 02049 A > please run these thru heavens-above to see which best fitted > your observation > Tony Beresford Thanks much Tony!! The last one, 27550, appears to be the closest match based on LOS and it's close proximity to earth against the others. According to H-A its JB-3, launched by the PRC. ZiYuan-2, or JianBing-3 is a 4-year old reconnaissance sat with a 2-yr lifespan. I cant find any info on whether it's still active or not. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/zy-2.htm - info on satellite. 10352 (Kosmos 951) might be another possible candidate but not sure based on the fact we lost sight of it after only 3 minutes, if that, of viewing. Its 30 years old, so I don't think it's still in service, but with it being 1000 km up I don't think I would have seen it. I'll plug these in and try to catch them these next few days to see if it does the same as before with the 7-8 second winks. If anyone else sees them please advise if they tumbled for you. ;-) -- Gregory S. Williams gregwilliams(at)knology.net k4hsm(at)knology.net http://www.etskywarn.net http://www.twiar.org http://www.icebearnation.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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