Vanguards 1,2,3; Gorizont 14

Mike McCants (mikem@freeside.fc.net)
Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:49:03 -0500 (CDT)

Vanguards 1, 2, and 3 were seen last night.

Vanguard 2 was found near the zenith about 2:30UT (Sep 20)
in my 8 inch and tracked for quite a while.  It varied from about
magnitude 10.5 to invisible with a period of about 7 seconds.
Its range was 1800 miles.

Vanguard 3 was found high in the south about 2:54UT.  It had a
complex light curve.  Mainly it was magnitude 9 to invisible with
a period of roughly 40 seconds, but one "flash" to magnitude 8
was observed.  Its range was 1400 miles.

Vanguard 1 was seen only by the owner of a 16 inch Dobsonian
for several seconds as it went near the zenith at apogee.  It was
predicted to be magnitude 13 and he said that was about right.
Its range was 2400 miles.

Gorizont 14 was observed flashing to about magnitude 4 for over
80 minutes.  The flash period was 57 cycles in 4977.8 seconds
giving a period of 87.33 seconds.  The altitude was 42,
azimuth 194, range 23800 miles.  The time of observation was
from 4:30UT until 5:55UT.

The DSP was observed flashing from 4:04UT until 4:19UT.

Observations were from our dark site 65 miles northwest of Austin.

Mike McCants
Austin, Tx