Re: Low and bright!!
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Wed, 28 Apr 1999 01:53:28 -0500
Wayne Halley's "Low and Bright!!" object, and a similar sighting
in England the night before that was posted to the newsgroup by
Paul Telco, appear to me to have been the soon-to-decay Cosmos
808 Rk (08755, 76-24B). (Alan Pickup's SatEvo Decay List #75
predicts that it will decay on May 5.)
This is one to watch, if you have a pass! Tuesday night (early
Wednesday UTC), one orbit after Wayne's pass, this one caught
me by surprise even though I had a timely prediction -- which
happened to be on the next page of my printouts. This object
was definitely very bright and, due to its low height above the
surface, very fast! (I'm kind of wondering about the intrinsic
magnitude of this object [and other Vostoks?], since its
observed magnitude of about +0 on my pass was at least a full
magnitude brighter than predicted, on a very-near-zenith pass.)
For those who don't know -- for keeping up with objects with
rapidly changing elsets, there are Alan Pickup's posts here,
as well as his elset files. For all decaying objects he has:
http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/dklist.tle or
http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/dklist.zip
For selected objects -- major decayers, "special", and newly
launched:
http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/select.tle or
http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/tle/select.zip
Also, Mike McCants has elset files, updated daily, for
"high-drag" and for recently launched objects:
ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/highdrag.zip (< 1K)
ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/highdrg2.zip (~ 20K)
ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/thirty.zip
And of course Mike also posts the weekly OIG reports here.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA