To briefly sum it up: WOW!!!!! The first thing I saw was a bright cone shaped cloud rising in the South-West at about 19:13 UTC, 18-OCT-09. I thought that this was the Centaur but then a bright new cloud appeared some 25 degrees further to the upper right in the West. In binoculars there was a red central light from where the cloud expanded. The other cloud was closer to where the DMSP F18 satellite would have been expected and must have been from an initial firing of the Centaur. The actual Centaur passed 2 degrees below Vega at 19:14:16 (close to Ted's prediction) still *puffing*. It then seemed to stop venting after about half a minute but then about two minutes later *giving off steam* again. Both clouds followed distinctly different trajectories. They remained bright enough to be seen even quite close to the (city-) horizon. It shows up nicely on the photographs I took. Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany 49.8822N, 8.6558E ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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