Hello, I am hoping you can help me figure this out. This evening, I was trying to locate comet swan from my home. It was a little late for my location, as the hill and tree line cut into my horizon significantly. But I tried anyway. I took my 4.25" f/4 Star Blast reflector out and set it up. I line up on the pointer from Ursa Major and start scanning in the general area for the comet. I catch a glimpse of movement, and recenter. Yes, a satelitte. I let the moving dot slide on out of the frame, and just as it disappears, a second, satelitte also appears. Whoa! What was that? I followed both of those points for over 2-minutes, before I lost them in the trees. I tried to see the naked eye, but couldn't. They both appeared to be traveling at the same rate, and in the same direction. General direction, NW to SE. I could keep them both in the one telescopic field of view as I followed them. I was convinced that I had witnessed the ISS and a seperate resupply ship, which were either had just recently come apart, or which would soon dock. So I run inside to check Heaven's above, and I am shocked when it tells me the ISS isn't visible from my location today. For that matter, I couldn't find any satelitte on the site that seemed to fit. What the heck did I see? Planes in formation? I'm a private pilot (not current at the moment) and I don't think I saw planes. I've seen enough satelittes to believe that is what I saw. I'm guessing that my field of view in the scope was somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees. Here are my location details: My location: Seymour, Connecticut, USA Approx. : 41° 35' N 73° 4' W Time : Approx. : 20:45 PM Scope details Mirror 114 mm diameter Focal length 450 mm 17 mm plossl eyepiece Can someone point me in the right direction here? What did I see? Thanks for the help. -Bill Chellis Editor, The Shooting Star Astronomical Society of New Haven wmchellis AT gmail DOT com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Oct 14 2006 - 23:15:26 EDT