Hi: While prowling the the geostationary belt, I found a satellite that is not in either alldat.tle or in Jonathan McDowell's geostationary orbit catalog. It lies between Intelsat 709 (23915 96035A) and Intelsat 706 (23571 95023A). From timings of passage of stars, it is 0.55 degrees east of 706. That puts it at 52.41 W. For anyone who wishes to check my arithmetic, a star reaches the UNID 131 seconds before it reaches Intelsat 706. When I first observed it, back in December 1999, I assumed it was a very slow drifter. I spent the winter in the UK and didn't confirm the beast until a week ago and it has not moved. I have seen it several times in the same position. My guess is that it is a military comsat of some sort. Any ideas?? Brian Brian K. Hunter, Department of Chemistry Professor Queen's University bkh@chem.queensu.ca Kingston, Ontario (613)-533-2620 Canada K7L 3N6 44 14' N 76 30' W ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Mon Jun 05 2000 - 11:36:16 PDT