Cosmos 2282 Sunday night from SoCal

From: Matson, Robert (ROBERT.D.MATSON@saic.com)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 02:24:37 EDT

  • Next message: David Brierley: "DMB some obs Sept 8 am."

    Hi All,
    
    Looks like Paul and I were timing Cosmos 2282 (#23168) at about
    the same time, though clouds prevented me from timing it as
    long as he.  Here's Paul's report:
    
    Cosmos 2282 (23168)
    94- 38 A 02-09-09 04:44.2    PG 4264.8 0.1 205 20.804 +4/+6->inv
    
    And here's mine:
    
    Cosmos 2282
    94- 38A 02-09-09 04:08:30.6 RM 1913.94 0.05 92 20.8037 +4/+6.5 --> inv
    
    The 20.8037 figure should be accurate to +/- .0005 seconds,
    so Paul's reading and mine are in perfect agreement.
    
    While timing it, I saw a number of intermittent flashes at
    irregular intervals to the west of Cosmos 2282, but could
    never pin down the exact location, or even verify that it
    was a single object producing the flashes.  Whatever it was,
    it was not flashing very often nor very bright (+7?) --
    period was greater than 2 minutes.
    
    Spotted three dim satellites crossing my binocular field of
    view while timing 94-038A.  Two of these were flying side-
    -by-side trajectories headed south which I later identified
    as USA 32 and Cosmos 2389 R/B.  USA 32 was by far the
    brighter of the two -- perhaps magnitude +4, while
    Cosmos 2389 R/B was flashing fairly rapidly with +5 peaks
    and +8 minima.  Stopwatch was occupied at the time ;-), so
    can only estimate the period as being between 3 and 5
    seconds.  The other satellite observed was Cosmos 1241 R/B
    which was at least two magnitudes dimmer than the predicted
    +5.4.
    
    Usual viewing location in Newport Coast, CA.  Will forward
    report to PPAS tomorrow for Cosmos 2282.  --Rob
    
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