Forced reentry of Cosmos 2495 - video from New Mexico

I posted a video of ( likely ) Cosmos 2495 as it passed over New Mexico 
on September 03, 2014, from 0431 UT to 0433 UT.

https://vimeo.com/105618310

Brief and preliminary notes:

September 03 2014  -  0431 to 0433 UT

I think this is the Cosmos 2495 satellite descent and decay as it was 
passing from south to north over New Mexico just before it reentered the 
ionosphere over Colorado. I am not sure if it is engaging the ionosphere 
at this point and burning. ? Maybe it is just starting to make friction 
? Perhaps others can analyze this and let me know.

This event was captured on my Sentinel all-sky camera which is primarily 
a fireball camera that I merged with my VHF forward scatter radio array. 
This particular capture was baffling to me as it sounded like a 
satellite radio reflection but it was an odd reception. I actually 
thought it might have been some sort of airplane since its light 
appeared to fluctuate especially as it traveled north of my location. I 
even thought it might have been some sort of a secret experimental 
aircraft (like the Aurora project plane that used to be sighted over New 
Mexico many years ago.)

In any case, I luckily saved the video and put it into my inconclusive 
file, later to find out by reading the seesat list that it was likely 
the Cosmos 2495 re-entry.

Radio-wise: Note the dopplering scatter reflections in the first fifty 
seconds. The analog scatter transmitters were likely Mexican tv stations 
broadcasting at 61.250 MHz CW and 83.250 MHz CW. Listen close in stereo.

Any further elucidation of this event is welcome. I an an observer and 
recorder but not a reentry analyst.

Any corrections to my notes and text is welcomed.

(Also, sorry for the dim quality of video. My old camera is pretty worn 
out and the white dots are not stars but rather dead pixels.  Yet it is 
still a pretty good fireball capture system.

Thomas Ashcraft
ashcraft (at) heliotown.com
Radio Fireball Observatory
New Mexico








On 9/8/14 2:54 48000, Björn Gimle via Seesat-l wrote:
> Rob Matson sent me the following info, of which I was not aware otherwise:
>
> ...I do occasionally check the archives to see if interesting events that
> IâEUR^(TM)m aware of have been brought up there. I was VERY surprised to see that
> no one has mentioned the spectacular administrative decay of Cosmos 2495
> three nights ago over Colorado and Wyoming!
> It was witnessed by hundreds of people and the debris cloud is very
> impressive on Doppler radar (a snapshot of which IâEUR^(TM)ve attached). That
> drifting debris cloud is visible for over half an hour in radar images from
> Denver and Cheyenne. A little surprising to me that the Russians would
> command destructive reentry to occur over land rather than ocean âEUR"
> especially over CONUS âEUR" when some pieces of the 6.7-ton satellite will
> likely survive to the ground.
> ...
> The reentry occurred at around 10:30 *pm* local time Sep.2, so not a daytime
> reentry.  Feel free to post my comments to SeeSat with my name.
> I'll be a little surprised if there wasn't at least one list member who
> witnessed it.
>
> [Image is about 500kB]

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