Satellite marathon

Daniel Deak (dan.deak@sympatico.ca)
Mon, 22 Mar 1999 00:01:51 -0500

Hi everybody,

      Thanks to Sue and Ed, I decide to spend my Saturday night outside
not to miss a unique tandem tumbling Iridium pass. A Messier objects marathon
was organized by the local astronomy club to give observers a chance to see
a maximum number of Messier celestial objects in one night from dusk til dawn.

      At the last minute and given the nice weather, I decided to participate in a
different way by making a satellite observation marathon beginning with the
Iridium pass. It ended at 02:30 AM local when the clouds moved in.

      We were 3 people to watch the pass (the others were not there yet) with
binoculars or naked eye. I watched in my 20x80 as they passed in Auriga then
decided to watch at 1x. Iridium 44 was more impressive. I saw only 2 naked eye
flares, the strongest was at mag -1 above Betelgeuse.

      I interrupted my marathon to make 2 positional observations as follow :

22251 92 083A   9999 E 19990321010022400 37 25 1313400+564300 68 S+035 07
98004 99 000A   9999 E 19990321012344300 37 25 0953000+144100 68 S+075 07

22251 is USA 86 and 98004 is Novnoss. Note that my site number is changed for
these two with the coordinates being : 45° 53' 55" N, 72° 25' 59" W, 87 m.

      The goal of my marathon being to see the greatest number of sats possible, I
didn't take the time to make positional measurements. Also I did not have the time
to prepare myself in advance, so I decided to take my computer with me in the
field, put it in a shed heated by a wood stove and make my predictions on the fly
only a couple of minutes before going outside to observe. Here is the list of my
25 observations  (times are UTC on March 21) :

    Name       USSC#   time
Iridium 44     25078  00:00
Iridium 20     24871  00:00
Meteor 1-8 r   05143  00:07
Cosmos 2082 r  20625  00:15
Globalstar 36  25621  00:24
Meteor 2-1     08026  00:28
DMSP B5D1-2    10033  00:44
Cosmos 1091 r  11321  00:45
Cosmos 389     04813  00:53
Cosmos 1371 r  13242  00:54
USA 86         22251  01:00
EGP r          16910  01:09
USA 32         19460  01:12
Novnoss        98004  01:24
Cosmos 1732    16593  01:36
Globalstar 38  25623  01:40
Cosmos 411 r   05218  01:45
Cosmos 2082    20624  01:52
Globalstar 40  25624  01:57
Cosmos 1589 r  15172  02:04
Cosmos 1803 r  17178  02:10
Cosmos 1550 r  14966  02:21
Globalstar 36  25621  02:23
Globalstar 23  25622  02:44
Gorizont 14    17969  03:07

      There has been some negative obs not listed there. At 03:00 UTC, I decided
to look for flashing geosync sats. I observed Gorizont 23, Telstar 401 and Superbird
A for 5 minutes each with my 20x80 but saw nothing. I watched Gorizont 14 for 15
minutes and saw only one mag 5 flash at around 03:07 with an 8" telescope.

      I took the time to identify my 3 unIDs before leaving the observation site. They
were #5142, 8026 and 25621. I saw all the satellites from the February 9 Globalstar
launch (saw #36 twice). At the end of the night, everybody was inside the shed and
we talked about satellite observation. I think some of them got really interested
and one phoned me today to tell me he installed STSPlus...

      Cheers !

      Dan

--
Daniel Deak
St-Bonaventure, Québec

COSPAR site 1745 : 45.9483°N, 72.6539°W, 58 m., UTC-5:00

E-mail : dan.deak@sympatico.ca
French language satellite web site : http://www3.sympatico.ca/dan.deak/