ABRIXAS yes, 99099 and Milstar 3 no
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Sun, 27 Jun 1999 04:15:31 -0500
Saturday evening (early 27 June UTC) I finally managed to
observe ABRIXAS (25721, 99-22A), but it wasn't easy! I
didn't see any obvious variations, but it was pretty close
to the limit of what I could see with my handheld 10x50s.
The sky was pretty good but not perfect -- high humidity
and occasional low, thin clouds going over rapidly, and of
course a LOT of moonlight. I picked it up after the
culmination of its pass and watched it probably for less
than a minute before it got too faint.
A few minutes later I was not able to find either 99099 or
Milstar 3 (25724, 99-23A) and wished I'd had more than one
predicted position for each. Earlier I also failed to find
USA 86 (22251, 92-83A), which had made some one-power
perigee passes over hear in the last week or so.
Iridiums 79 (25470, 98-51D) and 11 (24842, 97-30G) did some
very nice flashes. Iridium 21 (24873, 97-34E) appeared at
not very bright one-power, about +3.5, for about 10 seconds.
COMETS H-2 Rk (25176, 98-11B) made a very nice pass, getting
up to about +0.5 magnitude. It's tumbling slowly, maybe
about two maxima per pass the last couple of times I've
seen it.
Observing location was 30.3068N, 97.7267W, 150m -- grounds
of a museum near my apartment.
After our late-night/early-morning summer clouds moved in for
sure, I walked a few minutes for exercise and then, less than
half a block from my apartment, as I looked at my clock to
see how long I had walked, I collided with a dead tree branch
that scratched my forehead, eyebrow and eyelid and just
missed getting into my eye, which made me very glad that I
was wearing glasses! I was walking in the street, but it
seems that I wasn't far enough into the middle of it to avoid
overhanging tree branches! I was consoled to some extent
when, a few moments later, I saw a yellow-crowned night heron
(back again this year) in the creek by my apartment.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA