TVSat 1 (87-095A, 18570) is a flashing near-geosynch. It was visible in 10x50 binoculars (up to +6) for a few minutes on Sept 14 UTC (Thursday PM CDT) and Sept 17 UTC (Sunday PM CDT). Very briefly visible in binocs and confirmed in Mike McCants' 8-inch (200 cm) telescope were a few very quick double-flash maxima at what might be its "phase shift", which was at about 2:58:20 on Sept 17. When I first saw it on Sept 14, it was doing the double flashes. On both nights the last observations were with Mike's telescope (so I could see it later than with binocs); on the 17 we "let it go" in order to observe other objects. It's getting fairly far SW for us. Here are PPAS reports: 87- 95 A 01-09-14 02:36:29.0 EC 1626.4 0.5 70 23.23 +6->inv 87- 95 A 01-09-17 03:05:40 EC 765.7 0.4 33 23.20 +6->inv While looking for Gorizont 8, I saw an extremely rapidly flashing west-to-east UNID, about +5.5, whose maxima quickly dimmed at least a full magnitude before it became too faint to follow (or went into eclipse). It appears to have been SCD 2 (98-060A, 25504), a small, octagonal, spin-stabilized Brazilian satellite whose operational spin period is said to be 32 to 36 revolutions per minute. Cosmos 2151 (91-042A, 21422) flared to -1 for a few seconds at about 1:45:17 UTC Sept 17. BCRC observing location: 30.315N, 97.866W, 280m. 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/sat/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 20 2001 - 17:55:53 EDT