Shenzou observed from Canberra, Australia

From: Bill Frost (billfrost@bigpond.com)
Date: Thu Sep 25 2008 - 21:59:10 UTC

  • Next message: Kevin Fetter: "clouded out"

    Congratulations to China on a successful launch.
    
    Perfect viewing opportunity at 4:17 am local time.
    
    18:17:15 UTC synhronised Ultrak stopwatch to GPS LCD and went outside (yes I left it late to acclimatise!!!). Saw both objects immediately in predicted azimuth / elevation.
    18:18:46.90 pressed lap timer as leading object passed a star (from a subsequent check I believe it passed a third of a degree W of i-Carinae).
    18:18:55.41 pressed lap timer for second time (ie I make it 8.56 seconds separation).
    
    As it was 4:18 am local time, in case I have made a silly error, raw stopwatch data shows first button press at 1 minute 31.90 seconds after 4:17:15 am local time and 1:40.41 for second object.
    
    Now here is the interesting part. The trailing object was steady and had a constant illumination - Orbitron estimated +3 but I thought it was brighter than that, say 2.5? The leading object is flashing and tumbling. Just before I took my observation, it flared to around magnitude 0, then disappeared. I assumed it had passed into the earth's shadow and concentrated on watching the trailing body. It remained steady. A little while later, the leading body reappeared and flared, then disappeared. Intrigued, I watched the pair until they dropped below 10 degree elevation and using the counting estimate trick of 1000, 2000, 3000 etc came up with a very rough 21 second period between flare - disappear -----> flare - disappear etc.
    
    The GPS sitting next to me gives my position as 35 26.0975 S and 149 degrees 05.2400 E. GPS height is 595 and from memory we are 19.5 metres below the ellipsoid (ie my true height should be 615 m AMSL).
    
    Thanks Orbitron and Ted Molczan for predictions.
    
    
    Cheers,
    
    Bill
    Canberra, Australia
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive:  
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 25 2008 - 21:59:57 UTC