Gorizont 23 and another nearby flasher
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Wed, 20 Oct 1999 02:26:13 -0500
Tuesday evening local (early 20 October UTC) I wanted to try to
observe Gorizont 23 (21533, 91-46A) since it was about +4 a few
nights ago in the finder scope of Mike McCants' telescope. I did
find it flashing to about +4, but I also found something else --
another apparently near-geosynch object that was also flashing to
about +4.0 with a period of about 146.2 seconds (with each flash
lasting about one second). The two objects drew very close to
one another at around 2:57-59 UTC. The object that seems to be
the closest match is Cosmos 2172 (21789, 91-79A), but of course
it needs to be confirmed. Both Gorizont 23 and Cosmos 2172 have
an RCS of less than five square meters. The observing location
was: 30.3068N, 97.7267W, 150m.
Gorizont 23
1 21533U 91046A 99287.22583212 -.00000228 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 01858
2 21533 004.8772 064.3051 0007120 117.2085 242.9286 00.98909433024360
Cosmos 2172
1 21789U 91079A 99284.32770315 -.00000282 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 06234
2 21789 004.5529 065.5847 0006635 161.2148 198.9408 01.00370407033975
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
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