90007/00653A obs

From: Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 13 2000 - 23:34:57 PDT

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    Last night the cloud problems were just about as bad as the 
    previous night, but luck was better.  I was able to observe 
    a few flashes of 90007/00653A on either side of phi Virginis 
    between 3:23:27 and 3:26:41.  The star actually passed a 
    little bith north of it sometime between 3:24:15.65 and 
    3:25:52.77.  I'm pretty sure that the brightest flashes were 
    at least +4, since they were so easy to see in spite of the 
    thin cloud layer up there at the time.  After the 3:26:41 
    click, I looked at my stopwatch or something and then was 
    not able to find the right spot again, nor even as I kept 
    trying could I find phi and upsilon Vir any longer.
    
    Though it was truncated by clouds, this episode was roughly
    one hour earlier than I saw it on June 2 (which was about 
    4:22-4:28) and about 25 minutes earlier than on June 8 
    (3:49-4:01, with the last couple of minutes in telescope).  
    So it seems to be flashing here roughly five minutes earlier 
    each night.  At that rate it will get lost in twilight here 
    in about two weeks or less, I guess.
    
    The observing location for this and the next one on June 14
    UTC was 30.307N, 97.727W, 150m.
    
    Before I saw 90007, I was able to watch GSTAR 1 (85-35A,
    15677) for several minutes.  It seems to have accelerated
    since a few nights ago.  Its brightest flashes, though very
    fast, are also *very* bright and almost certainly should be 
    visible at one-power on a decent night.  Unfortunately, 
    it's geosynchronous and so a western hemisphere only object 
    for some time to come.  And it's now flashing too early for 
    those a couple of time zones west of us.
    
    88- 81 A 00-06-08 03:42:28.6 EC  652.5 0.2   9 72.50  mag +3.5->inv
    88- 81 A 00-06-14 03:02:29.7 EC  645.2 0.2   9 71.69  mag +3.5->inv
    
    The observing location for June 8 was 30.314N, 97.866W, 280m.
    
    Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
    
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