FYI: On May 19 Mike Bevan wrote about observing a flare which turned out to be NOAA 9. Last night (6.6.00 local) I was startled by a long, 15 second flare in the northeast. It peaked at about -4, dimmed somewhat and then peaked again before fading out. I observed it at 02:30:45 UT about 1/3 Eltanin to Rastaban in Draco's head. Findsat identified it as 19531/1988-089A NOAA 11. On May 31 2000 03:50:00 UT at RA 20h 2' dec 53.5 deg I observed a similarly bright flare of shorter duration that Findsat identified as 19336/1988-064A Meteor 3-2. Are Meteor satellites of this vintage known to flare? Someone asked about GPS satellites a few days ago: Although not a flare exactly, I searched for and observed Cosmos 1947 (Glonass, 19164/1988-0438). With a RCS of 0.9 and a range of 20,000 km it should have been mag 14, but appeared to be at least 3 orders of magnitude brighter sustained over several minutes of observation. Took about 1.5 minutes to move across the 1 deg FOV so it was definitely not a LEO. On the downside I searched for but did not find several other Mean Motion of Two satellites with RCS in the neighborhood of 10-50; should have been mag 10-11 at locations near the zenith and therefore easily observed with scope. These no-shows included: GPS 2-12 (21840/1992-009A), Cosmos 2318 (23672/1995-037C), Cosmos 2081 (Glonass, 20621/1990-045C), Cosmos 2323 (Glonass, 23736/1995-068C), and Cosmos 1971 (Glonass, 19502/1988-085B) . The Pushed Limit in excellent mag6 limiting skies was the soon-to-decay mag 8 or so Pegasus Deb 1990-029GW fragment of RCS 0.08 zooming past at a range of 460 km, bright, fast, and right on schedule. Wayne 33.860N, 83.242W ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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