Some visible passes of decaying objects over USA. I'm wading in above my head here, but using Alan Pickup's SatEvo predicted elements with Quicksat I got a 92-mile-high (147 km), near-zenith, WSW-ENE pass of the Cosmos 2054 aux motor (20399) going over southeastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico at about 1:59 UTC (7:59 Mountain Standard Time). Besides the weather, I guess that's in twilight at that location. I would really like to see such a low-flying, fast-moving pass! (This prediction -- and the two following -- have zero uncertainty in Quicksat, meaning that the element age is within plus-or-minus 24 hours of the time of the pass.) I also got a pretty good southbound pass of TOMS Rk (23941) at a range of about 820 miles (1300 km) to the WNW of here at about 2:32-33 tonight (Sept. 3 UTC) -- somewhere over New Mexico I think. Its orbital height is about 144 miles (230 km). The Cosmos 2275 aux motor is making a pass about 1,000 miles (1600 km) north-to-north-northeast of here at about 2:03-05 UTC tonight. The aux motors aren't very big, but they can be seen with binoculars on very good passes and perhaps would be one-power if illuminated at a range of less than 150 km. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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