Hi all, A couple of people have asked recently about the brightness of geostationary satellites. Listed below are some magnititude estimates of operational objects taken over the past 10 days or so. The table is set up for a fixed width font such as Courier. Cheers, Brian COSPAR NORAD NAME Magnitude(1) Type 94 022A 23051 GOES 8 12.3 FS 1300 bus 98 063B 25516 GE 5 11.2 Eurostar 2000 97 002A 24713 GE 2 11.3 AS 2100 97 002B 24714 Nahuel 1A 11 Spacebus 2000 97 050A 24936 GE 3 10.7 AS 2100 95 049A 23670 Telstar 402R 11.1 AS 7000 the next three are within a 0.3 degree field 92 072A 22205 Galaxy 7 11.7 HS 601 99 071A 26038 Galaxy 11 10.4 HS 702 99 027A 25740 Nimiq 1 11.4 AS 2100 99 005A 25626 Telstar 6 12.3 FS 1300 97 078A 25086 Galaxy 8 11.5 HS 601 95 069A 23741 Galaxy 3R 11.5 HS 601 97 026A 24812 Telstar 5 12.1 FS 1300 00 020A 26298 Galaxy 4R 11.9 HS 601?? the next five are within a 0.6 degree field 94 047A 23192 DBS 2 10.7 HS 601 95 029A 23598 DBS 3 12.0 HS 601 95 019A 23553 AMSC 1 11.4 HS 601 99 060A 25954 GE 4 11.4 AS 2100 99 056A 25937 DirecTV 1R 11.6 HS 601 96 054A 24315 GE 1 11.6 AS 2100 00 022A 26352 GOES 11 variable(2) FS 1300 bus 90 100B 20496 GSTAR 4 12.0 AS 3000 the next two are within a 0.2 degree field 99 025A 23581 GOES 9 variable(2) FS 1300 bus 96 022A 23846 MSAT M1 11.5 HS 601 91 067A 21726 Anik E1 11.7 AS 5000 90 026A 21222 Anik E2 11.5 AS 5000 the next two are within a 0.1 degree field =20 93 078A 22930 DBS 1 11.6 HS 601 99 050A 25913 Echostar 5 11.6 FS 1300 (1) These magnitude estimates should be taken as estimates for several reasons. Some are a single value and others are averages of several observations. The estimates are based on a small asterism about 0.3 degrees south of M11 and the magnitudes of those stars are taken from the Hubble Guide Star Catalog which does not contain particularly reliable magnitudes. I am operating close to the limiting magnitude for my site and telescope and the observing conditions have not been ideal lately. (2) Both GOES 9 and Goes 11 in storage and are rotating slowly. I would not call them flashers because they get to about 10.5 - 11.0 magnitude at the brightest and fade to less than 12.5 magnitude. The maxima are broad and unequally spaced. The spacings for GOES 9 are 191 and 290 seconds and for GOES 11 they are 227 and 316 seconds. The times are based on at least seven measurements and should be good to about +/- 3 seconds. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Sep 06 2000 - 16:52:16 PDT