Monday evening local (early March 13 UTC), I again observed the same flaring geosynch as a few nights ago and got better position measurements. Unfortunately, the two candidates, GE 8 and Aurora 2, were even closer together (same RA, 0.03 deg. difference in Dec according to Findsat; about 0.1 minute in RA according to Highfly)! Still, it again appears that GE 8 (26639, 00081B) is very slightly favored. Mike McCants recovered 98003 the same evening. Its elements were 236 days old, but it was reasonably close to predicted position. It's a very interesting object -- very complex flashes. Rick Baldridge discovered it in October 1998: http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-1998/0178.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-1998/0193.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Nov-1998/0346.html We got to have a last look at Mir, about 15 degrees up in the west to west-southwest. I was glad to see it once more, as it's one of the few satellites that I saw before getting into this hobby five years ago. Before Mike arrived at the site I saw a very bright (at least +0.5) pass of Cosmos 2372 (26538, 00-056A). During the pass it overtook and passed a much slower Zenit (Cosmos 2237 Rk, 22566, 93-016B) that was several degrees east of it. Even though it was still twilight, both were easy to see in the same one-power field of view for what seemed at least a minute. Article -- "Mir Control System Activated for Descent, Dumping in Pacific": http://space.com/missionlaunches/mir_online_010313.html It offers a planned re-entry date of "March 21, give or take a day or two". Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 14 2001 - 01:23:30 PST