I began tracking my 2005 Mar 09, 01:21 UTC pass, at about 13 deg elevation.
05004C was easily visible, but 05004A was invisible. As it rose past about 25
deg, 05004A began to rapidly brighten, flaring to about mag 1 for a few seconds,
then fading. I tracked both objects for 2 more minutes, during which A was
around mag 7 - 7.5, about 2 mag fainter than 05004C.
During the 2.5 min I observed of my 03:18 UTC pass, 05004C was easily seen, but
05004A was invisible. This was near elevation 23 deg, with high phase angle.
I observed both briefly during my 08:56 UTC pass. Both were visible, but A was 1
to 2 mag fainter.
My 10:47 UTC pass coincided with the Centaur overtaking both NOSS payloads. It
is in a slightly lower orbit, which has caused it to lap its payloads 34 days
after launch.
As they entered my field of view, they formed a near perfect right-triangle,
moving from right to left:
*B
*A *C
A few minutes later, they briefly looked like this, before B pulled well past A
and C:
*B
*A *C
So for a few minutes, there was a NOSS 3-3 triad.
During this pass, A was mostly brighter than C, by about 1 mag.
ObsReduce did not show the lower of the two reference stars of my 10:51:01.41
UTC obs of C. It turned out to be asteroid Pallas, shining at mag 7.3, at
12:37:05 +03:56:58 (2000.0). I added it to ObsReduce's addstars.txt file, hit
the Plot Satellite button to refresh the display, and there it was. I intend to
add planets and asteroids to ObsReduce, someday.
Since my observations spanned a period of more than 10 h, I recalibrated my
stopwatch at the end, and found that it had drifted nearly 0.01 s/h fast, which
I entered into ObsReduce to correct my times.
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309012137120 17 25 0405833-203115 18 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309012344760 17 25 0423198-074194 28 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309012606030 17 25 0451258+133992 18 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309012708330 17 25 0510846+304799 67 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309031827080 17 25 0235560+394034 27 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309031918960 17 25 0214092+472934 96 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309032056830 17 25 0056256+612089 28 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309032100690 17 25 0051167+614739 27 S
28538 05 004B 2701 G 20050309032210660 17 25 0032415+624725 28 R
28538 05 004B 2701 G 20050309085620950 17 25 0629204+581591 28 R
28538 05 004B 2701 G 20050309085648040 17 25 0638055+612878 37 R
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309085726380 17 25 0730616+661048 18 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309104722010 17 25 1026976+245755 18 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309104731410 17 25 1032288+242654 37 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309104737590 17 25 1031925+244229 27 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309104931510 17 25 1145190+141580 37 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309105101410 17 25 1237317+040307 18 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309105317240 17 25 1353621-143997 18 S
28537 05 004A 2701 G 20050309105453110 17 25 1439808-264166 18 S
28541 05 004C 2701 G 20050309105458770 17 25 1440744-262838 18 S
IOD format: http://www.satobs.org/position/IODformat.html
Site 2701: 43.68764 N, 79.39243 W, 230 m
Ted Molczan
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