RE: Strange sight last night

From: chester.geoff@usno.navy.mil
Date: Tue Jun 13 2000 - 06:42:22 PDT

  • Next message: Matthew.Fawcett@eastriding.gov.uk: "Apologies - USA32/JERS-1 obs"

    Tony:
    
    Yes, 90006 certainly seems to be in the right place at the right time.  Any
    speculation as to what this thingy is/was?  Its motion would also correspond
    better to what I saw, which was little, if any, wrt the trees and power
    lines that define the western horizon of my suburban front yard.
    
    The more I think about it, the less I think it was Cosmos 382.  I would have
    noticed motion in the time I watched it thru the binox, and there definitely
    wasn't much, certainly not 5 deg/min...
    
    Still haven't heard from the NWS office...my strongest suspicion is still a
    weather balloon.  I've ruled out an airplane on approach to Ronnie Ray-gun
    National Airport...the light was too "blue" to be a landing light.  It may
    also have been a specular reflection off the belly of a high-flying
    west-bound airliner well to my west, but there were no contrails visible.
    The atmosphere was quite juicy that day, with remnants of other contrails
    lingering for tens of minutes and spanning the sky.  And I'm too far east of
    the Skunk Works and Area 51 for it to be any exotic new toy of the Air Force
    :-)
    
    Cheers,
    
    Geoff Chester
    USNO Public Affairs Office 
    
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: Tony Beresford [mailto:starman@camtech.net.au]
    > Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 01:13
    > To: chester.geoff@usno.navy.mil; SeeSat-L@blackadder.lmsal.com
    > Subject: Re: Strange sight last night
    > 
    > 
    > Geoff, would the angular motion of #4786 be slow enough? I 
    > calculate it as
    > about 5 degrees/minute. Since the sky was still light, only 10 minutes
    > or so after sunset, you wouldnt have too many stars to 
    > compare it with!!
    > 
    > There is an object in Molniya orbit, noticed by Ed Cannon & 
    > Mike McCants
    > about 2 montha ago, that might fit the observation , its 
    > in the Mike's mccants.tle and alldat.tle file as #90006. The 
    > much greater
    > range does impose some problems as the specular surface would 
    > have to be
    > some 40 square meters and NOT solar cells!
    > 
    > A question to Mike Mccants or Ed Cannon. This object hasnt 
    > been tracked
    > since about day 104. Can you or anybody else get an uptodate 
    > fix on it?
    > It is in a 12hour synchronous orbit which doesnt come near 
    > me, so I cant
    > do ANYTHING about it.
    > 
    > Tony Beresford
    > 
    
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