John Corby-unknown satellite

Edward S Light (light@argoscomp.com)
Wed, 18 Oct 1995 08:44:57 -0400

John:

You recently wrote ...
> I was watching for Mir this evening (October 16th) and spotted another
> satellite which appeared about 30 seconds before Mir (approx 00:11 UT Oct
> 17th). It was travelling on a path from about Elev 30; Az 180 to about Elev
> 40; Az 120 with a magnitude of about 2.5 fading to 4.0. This satellite did
> not appear on my Quicksat predicted pass list for the evening. I am located
> at 80 deg W, 43.89 deg N at an elevation of 487 metres (Southern Ontario,
> Canada). I had set Quicksat to look for all sats over magnitude 4.5 using
> visual.tle ftp'd on Sunday 15th October from seds at Arizona U. Can anybody
> identify this satellite for me?

I believe your "unknown" was Lacrosse 1 (19671 = 88-106B). A quicksat run using
element set "cs951014" by Ted J. Molczan gave:

  43.890  80.000 1598.    John Corby ONT        1996  7.0 15 F F T T T
***  1995 Oct  16  Mon evening  *** Times are PM EDT ***  1927  643
 H  M  S  Tim Al Azi C Dir  Mag Dys F  Hgt Shd  Rng  EW Phs  R A   Dec

19671 Lacrosse 1    18.0 4.5         1.7 c 1.5
 8 10  1   .2 25 186   311  3.2  18 5  417 228  821 1.1  83 20 8 -20.6
 8 10 34   .2 31 178   306  2.7  18 5  417 197  726 1.2  75 2037 -15.4
 8 11  8   .2 37 167   298  2.3  18 5  417 163  647 1.3  65 2113  -8.9
 8 11 41   .2 42 152   286  1.9  18 5  417 127  594 1.4  53 2155  -1.0
 8 12 15   .2 44 132 C 272  1.6  18 5  417  89  573 1.3  40 2244   7.6
 8 12 48   .2 42 112   256  1.6  18 6  417  49  587 1.1  27 2335  15.6

As to its brightness, I've seen it on four different passes and its magnitude
was from 0.5 to 1.3 magnitudes fainter than the predicted values.

Clear and dark skies!
 Ed Light