Ed Cannon wrote: >I did not come up with any good candidates using loose parameters >with Findsat and alldat.tle as the source of orbital element data. As we were driving home, Ed suggested that the unid might be Telstar 402. I agreed that this was a possibility. It had been showing up in my predictions every once in a while recently. I had deleted its prediction before printing predictions for Sunday evening. But I remembered that my last recorded obs had a period on 0.8 seconds and that there was a good chance that this agreed with the observed fundamental period of 3/4 second. So when I got home I ran a prediction for Telstar 402 and it was a good match. My son was using our Internet connection to download music. He asked me if I wanted him to hang up, but I was so sure that Ed would also match the obs with Telstar 402, that I told him not to hang up. So I didn't call Ed and he couldn't call me. > 5/22 at 3:17UT - alt 50.5, az 157 (seen in binoc field near 19649, 88-102A) Telstar 402 gives a 27 seconds time residual and a 0.2 degree cross-track residual from this alt/azi position. Telstar 402 1 23249U 94058A 00142.27935861 .00125575 44451-6 16772-2 0 2711 2 23249 7.1801 61.5875 6287198 2.8542 359.4815 3.70830952 60607 >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 thought this was a very interesting phenomenon. If one could estimate an angular speed for the telescope motion, then the apparent distance that the flash was visible could be translated into a duration time and the dark space between the two flashes could be translated into a separation time. Suppose the telescope was being moved about 1/2 degree per second. Then a perceived distance for the flash of about 1/20 degree would mean a flash duration of 1/10 second and the distance between the flashes of about 3/20 degree would mean a flash separation of 3/10 second. It is possible that the speed could have been 1 degree per second and the corresponding times would be 1/20 second duration and 3/20 second separation. Mike McCants Austin, TX ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 - 09:32:09 PDT