Re: Mystery tracks through M42
Stephmon@aol.com
Wed, 6 Oct 1999 23:39:07 EDT
In a message dated 10/6/99 11:02:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
direland@drdale.com writes:
> That's just what I said to Sky and Telescope, they responded with "how
> do you know there were no satellites that night with a north-south path
> because only a portion of known sats have published elements".
>
>
> Dale Ireland
My immediate thought is, with the number of observers currently spanning the
globe, our interactive communication and cooperation and our track record
with either identifying (or generating elsets for unidentifiable) objects...
How could a such a /bright/ pair of objects evade us for an appreciable
length of time? If this was a rare flare by two objects that just happened to
be orbiting in formation on that one evening, it is certainly possible, but I
would think, one or the other would have come to our attention.
Being the one who spots bright, unidentifiable objects, with interesting
coloration, is one of the higher goals of many of the 600+ on this list.
Beyond that, thousands of amateur telescopes are studying the skies around
the globe and around the clock. Perhaps I'm overestimating the power of this
'network' of observation, but to my mind, the brighter an object is, the less
likely it is to escape notice and if it /isn't/ included in the elsets
available to us, the less likely it is to go unmentioned. Well, my two cents
anyway.
_______________________________________
Regards,
Stephen
stephmon@aol.com
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