Wow Ed,
I was thinking the same thing about the plethora
of flaring objects of late. I watched the NOSS 2-1
triplet come out of eclipse high in my NNE at 8 UT
(3am local time) next to Cygnus. Absolutely
spectacular. The haze was so bad that I couldn't even
see the any stars of Cygnus except Deneb. And yet all
three - as they emerged - were as bright as Deneb. And
then off to the NNE they went. I believe that they
were headed almost directly at the sun from my
perspective, going over the top of the earth. This
seems to make them flare (and maybe "flare" is a
misnomer since they stay bright to about 30 deg
elevation). I've seen this effect for 5 years now -
late summer night, the triplets emerging straight up,
off to the NE, brilliant. Will look for Superbird
tonight (BTW, what's a geosynch sat doing at -12 deg
Dec. for Austin TX? Is there something wrong with it?)
Also have a 70 deg in the West - northbound pass of
Cosmos 1 - can't hurt to look!
Regards,
Jeff Umbarger
Plano, TX USA
Lat +33.06946
Long -96.76807
200 meters
CDT (-5 UT)
--- Ed Cannon <ecannon@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Thanks to those who replied several days ago to my
> report of one
> of the NOSS 2-3 objects being invisible when the
> other two were
> easy to see. Since then, including last night (June
> 24 UTC)
> with haze and moonlight, all three of them were
> visible without
> binoculars for a minute or two.
>
> It's good to see good old Superbird A (89-041A,
> 20040) -- every
> night for a week or more now. And now that the Moon
> is getting
> out of the way and Superbird is getting higher in
> the sky, it's
> a good time for anyone who hasn't seen it to try.
> It's been
> doing its thing near nu of Serpens Cauda (about
> 17:20, -12.3);
> last night about 3:05-10 UTC (10:05-10 PM local
> time) from here.
>
> Recently we've seen a number of bright satellite
> flares, and I
> wonder how interested anyone is in knowing about
> them. Almost
> any payload can do that, but it does seem to me that
> I see more
> of them around our summer solstice (plus or minus a
> month or so).
> One "hotspot" is around the Big Dipper (UMa), with
> sunsynch
> earth-observing payloads doing them. But there have
> been bright
> flares in the south, southeast, and northeast also.
>
> Last night there was a prediction for Cosmos 807 Rk
> (76-022B,
> 08745) low in the west at twilight, but I was not
> able to see
> it. Its orbital height was under 224 km (140
> miles), so it must
> be nearing re-entry.
>
> Cosmos 1 comment. Even though, if its launch had
> been nominal,
> I would not have expected to see Cosmos 1 in
> twilight with my
> 8x42, and even though by the time of the pass I knew
> that it
> seemed not to have made it to the expected orbit, I
> tried to
> see it the evening of the launch and appreciate the
> opportunity
> (preliminary elements, Heavens-Above.com pass
> predictions, etc.).
> I know it's been a bitter disappointment to the
> folks who've
> worked on the mission, and I hope there's better
> luck in the
> future.
>
> Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas,
> USA
>
>
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