John Locker wrote: > I saw it a number of occassions at quite high mag , and also > through the veiwfinder and I saw no evidence of flashing , > although it was on one of those obs brighter than expected. > > If you look at the image captured by Paul a few days before > destruction , there's no eveidence there of anything tumbling > wildly as the statement from Hicks seems to suggest.Indeed it > was seen by a number of list members in those last few days > and I dont recall anyone suggesting it was tumbling. > And yet the Hicks statement would give the impression that > for the six weeks prior to intercept , the thing was going haywire ! I find that quote (below) insufficient to support the inference that Admiral Hicks meant it was tumbling wildly or going haywire; he was talking about stability on a time scale of at least one revolution, so he could have meant that it was rotating slowly: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=aerospacedaily& id=news/ASAT032408.xml <<< "[The dead satellite] was not stable," Hicks says. "It was rolling and tumbling and [its gyration] wasn't always the same from one orbit to another, which added to the technical challenge. We tried for six weeks to see what was predictable about what it was doing each orbit, and we just couldn't do it." >>> Although the object was generally observed to be steady in brightness, irregular variations were reported on a handful of occasions; however, those effects could have been due to changing illumination as it moved relative the observer. 0605701201807012417453953 01 12154540 +55132 1 5 +4 +5 I 0605701267507030805264480 010 12134255 +82437 20 5 +1 +2 I 0605701256307072921534325 01 12034870 +630288 30 4 +1 +4 I 0605701201808021818550344 01 12043408 -28284 1 5 -1 +3 I UK format: http://www.satobs.org/position/UKformat.html 29651 06 057A 4353 P 20080105164846400 17 75 2239271+677540 56 I+020 10 29651 06 057A 4353 P 20080105164858100 17 75 0041137+613880 56 I+015 10 IOD format: http://www.satobs.org/position/IODformat.html Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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