Last night (Sunday PM local; Sept. 24 UTC) clouds and rain prevented observing for quite a while, but later it was clearing so I went to the museum grounds nearby (30.307N, 97.727W, 150m) and with my 10x50 binoculars managed to see two flaring (+7?) geosats which I've identified as Anik F1 (26624, 00-076A, second time in a few nights) and later XM-2 (26724, 01-012A). Conditions weren't great, so they were not easy to see. My best sky position still seems to be just south of a pair of stars, 15 and 16 Aquarii (2000 RA 21:18:10.3, Dec -4.52, mag. +5.8, and 21:21:02.3, -4.56, +5.9, respectively, according to HomePlanet). For one thing, it's easy to see the progress of those two stars going just to the north of a satellite. I also looked at around 00:00, -5, and 23:00, -5, but didn't see any. However, theoretically it's still nine days before the optimum date for our latitude. Weather may be much better for the next few nights, but of course the Moon will be shining brightly. 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://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 24 2001 - 04:26:34 EDT