Last September, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the discovery of satellite/asteroid J002E3. Last I heard, it is believed to be the Apollo 12 third stage, in temporary orbit around the Earth/Moon system. According to the Project Pluto website (http://www.projectpluto.com/j002e3.htm), J002E3 has gotten up to 14th or 15th magnitude. Has anyone tried to see it visually? Any success or failures? If the predictions are accurate, J002E3 will get up to 14th magnitude for a few days around March 29th (and 13th magnitude around May 20). For observers in the eastern part of the United States, I have created some finder charts for this weekend (http://members.aol.com/jwholtz/sat/satellite.htm). Observers in other areas can use the ephemeris generator from JPL's Horizons (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.html) to create local predictions. John Holtz JWHoltz@aol.com 79d 48m W, 40d 37m N home page: http://members.aol.com/jwholtz/ "People who never look up avoid the cow manure, but that's all they ever get to see." ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 26 2003 - 00:07:18 EST