Ed, You wrote: > At the somewhat early end of the session due to the clouds, > I looked for one more in the northwest. To my surprise > there was a magnitude +1.5 (maybe brighter?) object to the > left of the pointer stars (west side of the bowl of the > Big Dipper, part of UMa). It was moving quite slowly > higher up the sky. It hit a star left of the bowl. I > tracked it as it climbed higher and slightly south, and > just before a cloud got in the way, it hit a very close > pair of stars. Findsat identified it as 14795, 84-012F, > NOSS 6(F). Quicksat predicted the magnitude near the > first position at +9.1 (int. mag. +6.5). The observing > site was BCRC, 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. I had similar experiences many years ago with an older triplet. Then all three satellites brightened to magnitude +2. I remember that is was rather high in the sky, somewhere between Vega and Hercules. Those brightenings were not exactly simultaneous but with a couple of seconds in between. The NOSS-satellites are very phase-sensitive. It has something to do with their shape and extensions I suppose. If I remember well once an even brighter appearance of a NOSS satellite was reported. It reached a negative magnitude while it was rather close to the horizon. Bram Dorreman COSPAR 4160 51° 16' 45.5" N 5° 28' 36.6" E (WGS84) 35 m ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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