This one might have Kevin making reservations to come down here :-) The APT in question was 28188 from Eutelsat W3A. Conditions had been excellent around sunset and in accordance with Murphy's law they rapidly deteriorated thereafter with cloud (and possibly Australian dust!) moving in to the extent that I was debating whether to try at all. However fortunately I did make the attempt with cloud breaking a little just between the area of culmination and shadow entry. The object was predicted by Calsky to culminate at 2.6 mag but it appeared much brighter than that and would have been difficult to see through cloud at that mag. I was using binoculars but in better conditions this would have been an easy object for 1x, probably around 0 or -1 mag. It could almost be described as flaring! At culmination it was due to be about the same height as the ISS orbits at, and anyone who didn't know better could easily have mistaken it for that in the unlikely event they were observing through the clouds! - (in fact there were no ISS passes due at the time in question.) Exact timing not taken- oops!- but was difficult enough to do any observation at all, with culmination predicted at 0736 and shadow entry at 0738 UTC and likely this was correct. I think this is only about the second APT I have managed to see, missed others for various reasons, but thanks Kevin for alerting us to these objects with their nice fast speed when at or near perigee. A Resurs 1-4 flare was predicted just after this but cloud made this impossible to check on- although even in better conditions I have not so far picked any up. Any further attempts at satellite observation were abandoned owing to the poor conditions. Robert Holdsworth Wainuiomata New Zealand 174.948E 41.261S (currently UTC plus 12, in a few hours will be UTC plus 13!) __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4458 (20090925) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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