hello, everybody. this is my first post on this board. i'm steve, in suburban st. louis, missouri, USA. I've been observing visible satellites since the autumn of 1998, which was when I first stumbled across the then-DLR website "heavens-above." the site altered my life, I guess, or at least my leisure time... and well it'd be a lie to say my sleep cycle hasn't changed slightly. I've observed many, many passes of Mir, the ISS, STS missions when possible, TRMM, HST, lacrosse 2,3, and 4 (but not 5 yet, more on that in a minute), the GRACE sats, and probably each of the iridium sats at least once, to name only a few. I even saw shenzhou 5 rocket before it decayed, which I felt fortunate to see. I have enjoyed learning the constellations arrayed as backdrops to these visible satellites. I'm really getting into astronomy and cosmology as a direct result of this hobby, which itself really stemmed from my interest in and love of aviation and spaceflight. unpredicted events such as the occasional bolide have added to my experience immensely. I now have committed to memory the names and locations of all 88 constellations and around 170 individual stars, so I'm starting to feel more confidence in my observations (my navigation seems to have improved also!) in a nutshell, it's been very rewarding. I began keeping a journal of my observations in october of 2003. many times when I've been out with my dogs, I've been sure to always bring a small flashlight, a pen, pad, and my watch with accurate time in case I observed anything. often I will return from one of these walks and look on heavens-above.com's "visible satellites brighter than 4.5" lists in attempts to identify what it was I've just observed. sometimes this works, but many times I have been frustrated to find no data which matched my observations, especially those I've made of some interesting tumbling objects. yesterday, I was chatting with my cousin and he mentioned to me his observation of a trio of satellites in formation. in an attempt to identify what he'd seen, I googled the terms "satellites" and "triangles" and found a seesat-L post from 1997... I can't express how glad I am to have found you guys! I'm looking forward to learning a lot from this group and hopefully adding something positive to the discussions which take place. I only hope I don't get on anybody's nerves, I'm afraid I am very much an amateur, and I'll probably ask some seemingly idiotic questions along the way, so please bear with me. thank you, in advance, to the administrator(s) and all the participants. here is the first question I have: I noticed that recently, seemingly having to do with the launch of this classified cargo at the end of april (which everyone seems to agree is lacrosse 5), the manner in which "International Launch Code" designations have been applied to objects has been changed from sequential increases (2005-007-A, 2005-008-A, 2005-009-A et c) to now sequential decreases (2005-999-A, 2005-998-A et c.) is this normal, has this occurred in the past? the guy who runs heavens-above, chris peat, had previously been very prompt and accurate in posting the data whenever something new went into orbit. now, however, there seems to have possibly been pressure applied to mr. peat (please see this article from spaceflightnow: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0503/02observing/ ) in mid-april, I believe around the 15th, the expedition 11 crew launched to ISS. I knew there were a series of ISS passes for st. louis at that time, so I was excited by a clear forecast. "cool," I thought, "I'll go out tonight and watch the station go by chased by the soyuz TMA!" you can imagine my surprise when I logged on to heavens-above.com and there was no "new" icon, no announcement whatsoever regarding the expedition 11 launch. "is mr. peat just getting lazy?" I asked myself, then I remembered the aforementioned article on spaceflightnow. the publication of that article took place in early march, I believe. I went into my email inbox and compared the STK launch alerts against heavens-above's sat database; mr. peat seemed to have stopped listing newly-launched objects in march and april for a bit. for example, cartosat-1 is still unlisted. soyuz-TMA-6 (?) was never listed. nor was the fact that TMA-5 landed safely with chiao and sharipov aboard (it's still listed as being in earth orbit.) nothing is identified as lacrosse 5, though the other lacrosse sats remain listed and there is a listing of the launch vehicle and its orbital info ("atlas 3B" is listed as international launch code 2005-999-A.) adding to my confusion, the sat listed just before the lacrosse 5 "atlas 3B" (as a result of searching "year of launch '2005'" in the "select a satellite from the database" portion of the website) is named COSMOS-1. COSMOS-1? isn't this the upcoming solar sail mission? from all accounts it is still on the ground (or aboard a russian sub or... you know what I mean!) also, the dates of launch have been flubbed (intentionally?) for both objects the launch date is given as "205." huh? also, this supposed "Cosmos-1" the guy has listed apparently passes st. louis this morning, fairly brightly at magnitude 1.9. when I first noticed the listing of such a bright new sat I thought it had to be a mistake, or that there was a previous object called COSMOS-1 from way back in soviet history sometime. when I went to heavens above.com, there it was, sitting right next to the atlas 3B launch on the list of satellites launched in 2005. I'm hoping, I'm really hoping that mr. peat has just made a series of errors and that he's not bending to pressure being applied from god-knows-who. I sent him an email questioning what was happening, to which he hasn't replied. I'm also curious, has or has not COSMOS-1 been launched? For some reason, is Lacrosse 5 masquerading as COSMOS-1 on heavens-above.com? lol for some reason, also, the sore-thumbesque designation 2005-999-A has piqued my curiosity. does sequence really not have too much to do with the numbers in these designations? I see that sat observing is much like astronomy, where can I find a catalog of catalogs? should I stop using heavens-above and "graduate" to something more accurate and/or complete (perhaps I should reinstall STK and just get TLEs from you guys?) one more question, about the legal implications of our hobby: for US citizens, do the new regulations mean we are prohibited from discussing sensitive payloads such as Lacrosse 5? when the government uses terms such as "more tightly monitor" does that mean we should be concerned about what it is we discuss? I find the notion laughable and nauseating at the same time. so, there are my first questions and a pack of comments, too, I guess. I hope to use the archive here to determine what some of the as-yet unidentified objects among my journal entries were. the decay alerts also seem especially intriguing. am I ever glad I found you folks... clear skies! -steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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