SPOT 3 "phase shift"?

From: Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Mon May 22 2000 - 02:35:19 PDT

  • Next message: Ed Cannon: "ISS & STS 101, and a few others"

    Recently when I've had chances to time SPOT 3 (93-61A, 22823),
    I've always come up with a fractional cycle in the middle of
    my timings.  For example, last night while Mike was observing 
    the eccentric flashing UNID and it was too faint for 
    binoculars, I looked for SPOT 3 and saw it do a few one-power 
    flashes, at least one them as bright as +1.  Here are the 
    timings:
    
    0      0  3:37:04.74 UTC
    1  20.91  
    
    2   2.09  
    3  13.91  
    
    4   5.44  
    
    5   1.84  
    6  13.84  
    
    7  21.06  3:38:23.83
    
    From longer observations on other nights, I'm fairly sure that 
    the fundamental flash period is about 21 seconds, but I can't 
    quite figure out how to analyze the above timings, specifically 
    numbers 2 through 6, which are similar to "non-fitting" timings 
    on other evenings.  It seems that either 2 and 3 or 5 and 6 must 
    constitute a fraction of about 3/4 of the fundamental period.  
    If so, would that be a "phase shift"?
    
    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 - 02:36:23 PDT