Just an hour ago I observed Keyhole USA 161 (2001-044A, #26934) giving a series of bright short mag. -2 flashes. Each flash was no more than about a second in duration. I caught 2 of these flashes with my camera. The best image (crop, reduced in resolution) can be seen here: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b176/marcoaliaslama/satellites/161_1906.jpg (arrow indicates short flash, also end of the trail in this case, which almost looks lik a bright star: faint trail can be seen preceding the flash to the upper right of it). These USA 161 flashes were quite like the short flashes of USA 186 and unlike the longer flares of USA 129 and USA 116 I have seen. I counted at least 3 such very short flashes in about 2 minutes time, but can give approximate times of only two of them: flash 1: 23:22:06 UTC +/- 1 s flash 2: 23:22:?? flash 3: 23:23:35 UTC +/- 2s I now have images with flares of all 4 Keyholes in orbit at this moment :-) Positions for USA 161 will follow tomorrow, along with Lacrosse 4 positions and perhaps more if I am lucky later this night with USA 116. - Marco :-) ----- Dr Marco Langbroek - SatTrackCam Leiden, Cospar 4353 Leiden, the Netherlands. 52.15412 N, 4.49081 E (WGS84), +0 m ASL SatTrackCam: http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/satcam.html Station (b)log: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com Atom RSS: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/atom.xml e-mail: sattrackcam@wanadoo.nl ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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