Hi all, Being new to the list but not to amateur astronomy, I'll provide some history. I began looking up when I was a child but did not truly look up until the age of 31 (1983) using a pair of very old 10x50 binoculars from my front porch in Conroe, Texas. The Edmond Mag 6 Star Atlas was my next purchase. From that point I have built 6 scopes including a 24" f/5.6, attended 14 Texas Star Parties, a Winter Star Party, a total solar eclipse, contributed to data for numerous grazes including the Pallas occultation, and have chased bats and alligators with Steven O'Meara. Does name dropping win me any points with this group? I've always found satellite observing very interesting especially the flashers and Iridiums. Attempting an observation of comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) this morning resulted in futility with the 10x70 binoculars even though the skies were exceptionally transparent. The nice surprise was seeing two dim satellites move through the field at the same time. I'm wondering what software would make it fairly simple to id those sats. I've used several prediction software packages over the years including Iridflar 2.21, Micro Orbiter 3.0, and WinTrak Pro for a short time (it was not very friendly). None of these packages would do for me what seems to be a backwards analysis. If anyone is interested, my particulars this morning were: September 22, 2004 10:53:20 UTC (5:53:20 CDT) 95.5512 west longitude 30.4765 north latitude Field centered @ RA 4h 47m Dec -25d 11m (5 degree binocular field) I noticed the two sats in the central half of the field moving south. The brighter was ~6th magnitude with the fainter one (~8th mag) about 1.2 degrees to the west. The fainter satellite was leading or trailing (did not note) in what appeared to be perfect step - like they were part of the same craft. They took about 30 seconds to exit the field. Thanks in advance, Kenneth Drake ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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