Unidentified Satellite (Classified?)

From: Patrick (patrickfwd@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jun 21 2000 - 21:20:17 PDT

  • Next message: Franz Strambach: "Decay observed???"

    Hi, I was doing some Binocular stargazing tonight, switching back from naked eye to my 10x50s every once in a while, and I happened
    to see two relatively bright sats pass over.  I wasn't ready to take positional measurements or accurate timings (although I did
    have
    the stopwatch in my pocket) so my details are sketchy at best.  The first sat was very fast moving, and passed below Vega and I
    *think* above Deneb around 3:18UTC.  The second was slow moving relative to the first, passing near Vega at about 3:21:30UTC and I
    have I identified it as Cosmos 1242 R.  So that leaves the first.  I ran predictions for that time period, and I can't find anything
    even remotely matching what I saw.  Normally, I wouldn't care, but it seems to me that this could be some type of classified sat,
    because it was moving very fast (suggesting a low orbit?) and was bright, I'd say from mag 2 to 3.5.  It wasn't flashing, and the
    mag was continuous throughout the pass. My location is:
    lat 41.831
    long -87.819
    So.. any thoughts?
    
    Patrick
    
    
    
    
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