Sorry for stepping in rather late in this correspondence - it has been hard enough to keep up with all the recent decayers and the publication my SatEvo decay list, not to mention my non-decayer activities :) Tony Beresford has already responded to Kate Martin's query. I concur that neither of the objects mentioned... >26420 99- 57 JR CBERS LM4 deb August 12.4 >26047 89- 1 N Glonass 40 Proton deb August 12 could have been the cause of this sighting. Specifically... #26047 = 89- 1 N = Glonass 40 Proton deb IMO, the final elset for this is more consistent with decay on the 12th than on the 13th. The last few elsets are discordant, however, and this is one of the very few objects for which I have been unable to obtain a satisfactory SatEvo evolution over the final day or three. In any case, its orbital plane at the time of the potential decay was about 2000 km to the NE of Queensland so no decay could have been observed from that vicinity. #26420 = 99- 57 JR = CBERS LM4 deb Here the fit over the final elsets is much better, though there is a gap of 18 hours between the penultimate elset and the final one. I estimate that this decayed on August 12 near a southbound equator crossing at 10:50 UTC near 16 deg E, over Africa. However, this was more than a day after the final elset so the uncertainty is about eight hours. The (near polar) orbit at the time of the decay was even further from Australia, being northbound over the E Pacific and southbound over Africa. Also... >1) Can anyone advise where these objects finally "went down"? Probably not. >2) Does anyone know of other possibilities that I have missed? I know of no other decaying satellites near this time. I suspect the object sighted was a meteoric fireball. Alan -- Alan Pickup / COSPAR 2707: 55d53m48.7s N 3d11m51.2s W 156m asl Edinburgh / SatEvo & elsets: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/ Scotland / Decay Watch: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Oct 07 2000 - 10:47:31 PDT