Tony Beresford wrote:
> It seems the fuel dump for the Centaur upper stage was seen
> from Bejing.
> Here are some reports by Hang Muen from the Bejing planetarium.
> Posted on the Comet-Obs list.
>
> Yiran Wu (39.979deg N, 116.299deg E, northwest suburb of Beijing)
> found the object in Aries by naked-eye and immediately reported to me
> at 11:21 UT (hereafter). Her estimation of total magnitude is
> about -2 ("somewhat bighter than Sirius").
> I myself (39.883deg N, 116.617deg E) saw the object with a 12x60
> binocular. The object had a typical cometary apperance with a
> slightly curved tail towards SE-E, at 11:24. Core magnitude was about
> +0.5, total magnitude about -1.5.
> Hongbin Li at Xinglong Station, NAOC (40.396deg N, 117.578deg E,
> mountain top; MPC code: 327) asked me via internet if there is a very
> bright comet in the western sky at 11:34. But he said that he found
> that object about 20min earlier.
> The 0.8-m Tsinghua-NAOC telescope had pointed in turn to 179P and
> 150P since 11:40, but found it was neither of them.
> Yiran Wu reported the object, especially the core, was rapidly
> fading, at 11:43. And could no longer found it since ~11:59. Hongbin
> Li also found the object was expanding, decaying and slowly moving
> toward the north, and finally disappeared to naked-eye at 12:14, near
> 382 Per.
I cannot find 382 Per in any of my references. I would appreciate its RA and
Dec, from anyone who can look it up.
Thank you,
Ted Molczan
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