I'll agree with this, but on a naked eye basis, and seen in a misty sky. The Centaur itself reached about Mag -1 and orange overhead, the first cloud being at the same elevation as Jupiter but to the East, as a circular blob initially, which I took to be the burn, about half the diameter of the Moon. The pass continued as the second cloud followed overhead as as an arrow head 'spike' fanning out to a triangular base as it continued to the north. I would agree with the second emission from the Centaur after it appeared to initially cease. A camera would not have done justice to such a wonderful event, and to actually see an object achieving escape velocity to orbit the sun, visible to us on the ground - that has to be a unique? sight in my 25+ years of satellite tracking. Ted - wonderful work and well done on the calculations, I timed the first cloud overhead at 1912 whilst explaining to others what we were looking at! Max White Worcester UK > From: grd.holtkamp@t-online.de > To: SeeSat-L@satobs.org > Subject: Centaur-Clouds > Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:39:55 +0200 > > 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 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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