Earlier tonight, observing at the dark-sky site Canyon of the Eagles, by accident in my peripheral vision I saw a bright flash. On site I failed to find the matching predictions that I had, but after getting home Findsat told me it was Superbird B1. It was flashing +2 about every 52 seconds, and a secondary (about +6) maximum at 26 seconds was visible with my binocular. That's quite a bit shorter flash period than last reported. We were at a star party, so a number of the other folks on the field saw it, and one person even got it in a 17-inch (430mm) telescope. It flashed brightly for at least 15-20 minutes, and from first sighting until I couldn't see it was about 40 minutes -- RA 8:50 to 9:30. The secondary maximum disappeared maybe 10 minutes or so before that primary. I believe that its flash episode is something like 20 minutes later from night to night. I last saw it less than three months ago, so it circles the Earth fairly rapidly for a drifting near-geosynch. I'll submit a PPAS report later, for it and some other ones. 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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