This morning's observation was a pass at 1134 UT on 18 March 2021 (5:34 AM MDT local). Using 7x50 binoculars, I picked up the procession at azimuth 10 degrees, elevation 20 degrees. Groundtrack was to the northeast and to me they moved mostly right and down. They were a near uniform brightness around magnitude 4 so it made for a nice pass. This time I used a stopwatch and got the passage duration at 1 min, 58.2 seconds for 59 satellites. Unknown if 59 was a counting error but will assume that is the reason. When I came in I compared that 118.2 seconds to the prediction interval from Heavens-Above.com...which was 110 seconds. Given element age and post elset maneuvers, H-A times appear to be useful to predict the approximate passage duration. _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Thu Mar 18 2021 - 07:17:56 UTC
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