Hi Ed, You are observing the 'about to enter eclipse' phenomenon. It is still a few days early for me but I am 15 degrees north of you and the optimium viewing date moves later as you move north. There are several sets of geosats that you should be able to see as groups. PAS 3R (23764), PAS 6 (24891), and PAS 6B (25585) are with in about half a degree. PAS 5 (24916) and PAS 9 (26451) are farther west and very close together. Galaxy 11 (26038) which you have seen is accompanied by Galaxy 7 (22205) on the east and NIMIQ (25740) on the west. For good measure, to the west of these, DBS 2 (23192), DBS 3 (23598), AMSC 1 (23553), GE4 (25954), and Directv 1-R (25937) form a group of five within half a degree. All are visible in my 25 cm reflector but have not yet shown any sign of brightening. The position of the eclipse boundary does move slowly west with respect to the stars. When I was viewing this phenomenon from England in the spring, I had Rob Matson's Skymap running on my laptop and needed to use the Tycho catalog down to about 10th magnitude to keep track of where I was. Have fun. Brian Apologies to our European colleagues for not using COSPAR numbers but I don't have them handy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sat Sep 30 2000 - 14:57:39 PDT