Re: Midas 9

From: Tony Beresford (aberesford@iprimus.com.au)
Date: Sat Sep 22 2001 - 08:38:15 EDT

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    At 14:29 22/09/01 , Floyd Weaver wrote:
    >Good Evening Folks,
    >
    >	A few nights ago (9-16 UTC) I had an interesting sat ob. I saw  what I
    >figured to be Midas 9. I first noted this sat just to the east of the north
    >star at 1:10 and followed it up to near zenith at 1:15 UTC. It was going
    >through a cycle of maybe a minute duration. I did not time it other than
    >mentally, so I do not have an accurate time, but after one flare it then
    >gave a double flare about a quarter of a minute later.
    >
    >	During 1998 I saw Midas 7. These are unusually high sats (over 2,000 miles)
    >to see 1 power. Noting how old these sats are I do not think they are
    >working, but are rather tumbling dead sats. 
    From my own observations in the 60s and up to 1974-5 I would say you were
    extremely lucky to see midas7 without optical assistance. My brightest
    magnitude for this object was 6.0. More usually varying between mag 7 and mag 10
    at ranges of 4800Km. In late 64 it was slowly tumbling with
    an increasing period that was already over a 100 seconds. The brightest 
    magnitude in the collected WSRN brightness catalog was mag 4.8. In those
    days I was using a 20x120 monocular known as an "apogee scope" which
    I sometimes regret giving away!!
    
     Incidentally I had a nice high elevation pass of midas 9 at 1133 UT tonite,
    and saw nothing using 7x50 binoculars. I estimate magnitude 7.5 limiting
    magnitude.
    Tony Beresford
    8597, -34.9638, 138.6333E, 100mASL
    
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