Floyd Weaver wrote: >Tonight I believe I may have seen Telstar 401 naked eye for awhile. ... >Most of the flashes were around mag 0.... First noticed around >02:07 UTC.... ... saw one flash, still around an estimated mag 0 >at 2:44. ... >Estimated az and elv are 225 and 36 For about 2:00-3:00 May 8 UTC at Floyd's location, I get Telstar 401 (93-077A, 22927) at elevation/altitude 37, azimuth 225. Less than two weeks ago Mike McCants found it -- very faint -- with his telescope and timed its tumble period at just about exactly two minutes. So it seems to me that this is a very likely match. The next nearest known flasher appears to be GSTAR 1, alt. 38, az. 223. The last timing I'm aware of at the moment found its period to be about 71 seconds. Both of them can flash very brightly. I've seen Telstar 401 without magnification from the middle of the Univ. of Texas at Austin campus, definitely not a dark-sky location. I can't seem to come up with the data right now, but it seems to me that Telstar 401 flashed a little later each night, at least from here. Its (main) flash period was just over four minutes when first discovered by the folks in the hot tub in Houston, Texas: http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Feb-1999/0394.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Mar-1999/0041.html Floyd, thanks very much for the report! 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 07 2001 - 23:34:18 PDT