There was a very good pass predicted, high in the sky west of the meridian, so the phase angle was very good. It was between magnitudes +1.0 and +2.0, moving very fast. The heavens-above.com prediction was within three seconds of the one I generated with Quicksat. It went kind of close to Jupiter, very close to (just above) Arcturus, and then on through the bowl of the Big Dipper (UMa). Quicksat reported its orbital height at 133 miles (about 213 km). For those using heavens-above.com, you have to use the "Select Satellite" function to get passes for it, perhaps because it's not very big (?). Its Spacecom ID is 28871; COSPAR is 05-037A. When it's between the observer and the Sun, it can be quite faint. Is there an image of this spacecraft online anywhere? This flaring geosat season has been pretty disappointing here due mainly to not much favorable weather. About 9 or 10 nights ago I managed to see five of them. Then a couple of nights ago I saw two before clouds arrived. One of them was AMC 15, with zero residuals in Findsat. The other one was not near any stars that I could see with my 8x42 binocular. Mystery? I read a report by an amateur astronomer in Lubbock, Texas, of a stationary "star" not quite as bright as Saturn that he watched for three minutes, which then disappeared over a period of three seconds. This object was 10-15 degrees above and right of Polaris, so I suspect he may have seen a high- altitude object, possibly one of the Sirius Satellite payloads (although that one seems to have been too high in the sky). Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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