At about 3:16:45 (May 22 UTC) I aimed for Cosmos 1980 (19649, 88-102A) with my binoculars, and just as it came into view I saw a fast +4.5 or so flash a degree or two west of it. Another flash only three seconds later, and another, etc. Due to it being bright and in an easy place for me to describe, "about a degree or less west of the boundary between red and white paint below the top light of the radio antenna" (!), Mike McCants found it right away in his telescope. Soon he determined that it was moving slowly to the east. We observed it for almost two hours. Its motion in azimuth decreased, so it seemed it was ascending towards apogee. I timed the fundamental flash period at 2.98 seconds. During the observing time the brightest flashes faded from about +4.5 down to fainter than +8.5, and then about 90 minutes after it was first seen they brightened back up to about +5 again for a few minutes. In the telescope it was easy to see that there were four maxima in the three-second cycles, and that over time the pattern of the maxima varied. Also at least one of the four was double. Mike found that by wiggling the telescope a little, the two sub-flashes of the double flashes could be seen separately (split?) in the field of view. I did not come up with any good candidates using loose parameters with Findsat and alldat.tle as the source of orbital element data. Here are alt-az positions Mike read off the setting circles of his telescope at the given times (May 22 UTC): 3:17 - alt 50.5, az 157 (seen in binoc field near 19649, 88-102A) 3:40 - alt 48.5, az 149 (crosser, possibly 24731, 97-6G) 3:53 - alt 47.5, az 146 4:52 - alt 44.5, az 142 5:00 - alt 43.8, az 141.5 5:10 - alt 43.5, az 141 Also, I saw a crosser in the finder scope at about 3:28 that might have been 05847, 72-9B, but forgot to request an alt-az reading at that point. Observing location was BCRC, 30.314N, 97.866W, 280m. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon May 22 2000 - 01:50:56 PDT