At 12:46 1/03/00 , Tony Beresford wrote: >In the course of their asteroid hunting activities >Rob McNaught and Gordon Garrad, both occasional >contributers came across a 15 mag fast moving ( for them)object which >turns out to be something is orbit around the Earth. >The observed magnitude was 15.5 or so, but thats near apogee >Jonathon McDowell suggests its a lost prognsz satellite. >This satellite series was a russian magnetospheric satellite. Mike Mccants noted that the elset was like that for ASTRON 13901 83 20A. It was in the position at the time as well!! This object IS currently being tracked by SPACECOM. OIG The last 5 from their database are: ASTRON 1 13901U 83020A 00061.95833333 +.00000000 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09777 2 13901 063.7483 350.6887 7728244 001.8366 001.4369 00.24304085021071 ASTRON 1 13901U 83020A 00061.58559170 +.00000000 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09781 2 13901 063.7600 350.7030 7727268 001.8720 328.8050 00.24320039021061 ASTRON 1 13901U 83020A 00057.83333333 +.00000000 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09763 2 13901 063.6000 350.7200 7711038 001.7891 000.6278 00.24291190021072 ASTRON 1 13901U 83020A 00053.96965560 +.00000000 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09755 2 13901 063.9530 350.7540 7727767 001.6690 022.7460 00.24352918021076 ASTRON 1 13901U 83020A 00053.70833333 +.00000000 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 09748 2 13901 063.9452 350.7655 7728741 001.6517 359.8405 00.24348549021075 The difference between observed and predicted times are large when one uses an elset that isnt for the revolution the observation is from are large like 4 minutes. This is probably expected given that the orbit isnt what the model used in the calculations was meant for. Mike als noted that using his orbit integrator int2, the prognosz satellites not shown as decayed by OIG, will have all suffered decays due to perigees being pushed below sea level by the usual sun/moon forces on these very eccentric orbits. Tony Beresford 8597 34.9638S, ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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