On the evening of March 14/15 2000, I did a tour of the geostationary
belt by taking advantage of the brightness of these satellite as they near
eclipse.
I was observing from 50.8703N 0.3406E 15m at Herstmonceux Castle.
Observing conditions were not ideal. There was considerable sky
brightness from the first quarter moon and I had my telescope on a tripod
sitting on the sill of my open window.
It was clear with occasional wisps of jet contails drifting by. I was
also trying to photograph a visiting badger and the absence of an observation
should not be interpreted as meaning that the satellite cannot be seen. I did
miss several possible satellites. Where noted, a couple of the identifications
area bit dodgy.
All were seen in an 80 mm f/5 refractor using a 10mm eyepiece to give 40
power. This gives a reasonable field of view and a limiting magnitude of
about 10 or so. I used Rob Matson's Skymap to keep track of where to look.
I began at 21:10 by finding SAO 138023 at RA 11h10m15s DEC -7deg 23'35" and
magnitude 6.82.
I needed to use the Tycho catalog plotting down to 10th magnitude to keep
track of where I was. The shadow entry point moves slowly west in RA and I
gradually moved my target star to SAO 13987, SAO 137970, and finally
SAO 137858 and SAO 137856. These are all easy with the last at 7.82
magnitude. I find it helpful to use relatively faint reference stars as a
bright one tends to overpower the whole field.
The table below lists all the satellites I saw from 2000 03 14 21:26 UT to
2000 03 15 00:55 UT.
The types are collected from Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica.
TIME NORAD COSPAR NAME TYPE NOTE
Mar 14
21:26 24652 96093A ARABSAT 2B SPACEBUS 3000
21:38 20706 90063B DFS 2 SPACEBUS 100 1
23331 97070A ASTRA 1D HS601
25462 98050A ASTRA 2A HS601
21:44 23948 96040A ARABSAT 2A SPACEBUS 3000
25638 99009A ARABSAT 3A SPACEBUS 3000
21:55 22175 92066A DFS 3 SPACEBUS 100
22:06 25515 98063A AFRISTAR EUROSTAR 2000 2
22:14 19688 88109B ASTRA 1A AS4000 3
21139 91015A ASTRA 1B AS5000 3
22653 93031A ASTRA 1C HS601 3
23842 96021A ASTRA 1F HS601 3
25071 97076A ASTRA 1G HS601 3
25785 99033A ASTRA 1H HS601HP 3
22:26 24208 94044A ITALSAT 2 ITALSAT
25491 98056A EUTELSAT W2 SPACEBUS 3000
22:41 23537 95016B HOT BIRD 1 SPACEBUS 2000 4
24665 96067A HOT BIRD 2 EUROSTAR 2000 4a
24931 97049A HOT BIRD 3 EUROSTAR 2000 4
25237 98013A HOT BIRD 4 EUROSTAR 2000 4b
25495 98057A HOT BIRD 5 EUROSTAR 2000 4
22:54 22028 92041B EUTELSAT2-F4 SPACEBUS 100 5
23:04 25673 99018A EUTELSAT W3 SPACEBUS 3000
23:14 25049 97971A SIRIUS 2 SPACEBUS 3000 6
23:21 23730 95067A TELECOM 2C EUROSTAR 2000
23:36 23816 96015A INTELSAT 707 FS 1300 7
23:53 21939 92021A TELECOM 2B EUROSTAR 2000
24209 96044B TELECOM 2D EUROSTAR 2000
Mar 15
00:27 25949 99059A ORION 2 FS 1300
00:42 23528 95013A INTELSAT 705 FS 1300
00:55 21987 92032A INTELSAT K AS 5000
24957 97053A INTELSAT 803 AS 7000
NOTES:
1 Where two or more satellites are listed after the same time,
they are all in the same field of view.
2 Very easy at magnitude 6.5 or a bit brighter.
3 Seeing had deteriorated here and I'm not really sure how
many of the Astra group I was seeing. A few days ago, I could
easily see six objects. It is worth noting that, from Skymap
and the exisiting data, it is not possible to get exact
positions and be absolutely certain which object is which.
They are amazingly close together.
4 These make a very impressive sight, four of the five are
easy to see and they are more or less in a row.
4a Beware of the age of elsets;this one was 14 days old and
leads to a prediction error of 4 minutes.
4b Beware of the age of elsets;this one was 36 days old and
leads to a prediction error of 4 minutes. I was surprised to
find these two old elsets in the middle of a group where the
other three are 6 days old.
5 I stayed with this one until it entered the shadow. The
brightness was constant for the last two minutes and it faded
to invisibility over about 20 seconds.
6 May have been SIRIUS 3 (25492 98056B) but the timing is
better for SIRIUS 2.
7 This one is a bit of a puzzle. There should be three others
nearby: THOR 1 (20762 90074A), THOR 2A (24808 97025A), and
THOR 3 (25358 98035A). The identification is based on two things.
There is another FS 1300 visible below and the THOR's are all
HS376's which are spin stabilized. I would not expect them to
brighten as much and if I'd seen one of them, I'd expect to see
them all.
Cheers,
Brian
Brian K. Hunter bkh@chem.queensu.ca
Professor of Chemistry Phone: (613)-545-2620
Queen's University Fax: (613)-545-6669
Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 Canada
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