Hi Everyone, I finally found the time & a clear sky to try observing some operational geosats coming out of eclipse (shadow exit) this evening. Unfortunately, the sky was rather hazy in the southeast where I have clearest view of the geosynchronous "belt". Therefore, I decided to use my 6" telescope at x73 magnification which only gave a 0.7deg field of view. Nevertheless I did manage to observe two geosync. satellites. I targetted Inmarsat 3-F1 (23839 / 96-020A) first which became visible at 19:58UT 08-Oct-99, at a steady mag +9. In the same field of view to the southeast Intelsat 804 (2511O / 97-083A) was also visible at a similar magnitude to Inmarsat 3-F1. Both satellites appeared motionless, as stars swept across the field of view. Over the next 20 minutes both satellites gradually faded in brightness down to the limiting magnitude of the scope which was probably around mag +11 with the haze & light pollution. I came across a nice animation (animated *gif files) of several geostationary satellites entering & emerging eclipse taken by a driftscan CCD camera. Some satellites can be clearly seen to flare at shadow exit. http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/stardial/satellites.html Best wishes & clear skies, Jason 43.692N, 7.246E,30M (43d41'29"N,7d14'47"E,30m) --------------------------------- Dr Jason Hatton INSERM U 343 Hopital de l'Archet Rte St. Antoine de Ginestiere BP 79, 06202 Nice Cedex 03 France Tel(33)-4-92-15-77-00 Fax(33)-4-92-15-77-09 email : hatton@unice.fr ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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