Greg Roberts wrote: > I did a plane search for USA129 using Teds earliest orbit -- > I think it was #71008 - starting at 19h00UT and eventually > stopped by clouds at 2038UT. Several satellites were seen but > all going wrong way etc. However one satellite may be a > possibility. I am unable to find a match in the elements sets > I have so report it on the off-chance that it may be the > missing satellite. It was seen crossing the edge of the field > so I only had a short arc and in addition there is some field > distortion which I tried to minimise by using stars in the > immediate vicinity. The magnitude and direction were > reasonable but I got the impression it may have been moving a > bit slower than expected. The object travelled the 2.267 deg between Greg's two points in 9 s, for an average rate of 0.25 deg/s, within 0.01 deg/s of my search orbits. It is also a good match in all other respects, and no other object is, so I believe Greg observed USA 129. I will work on a new search orbit for USA 129. It is likely to be rough, but will narrow tomorrow's searches considerably, especially for Tony, who will see the orbit sooner. Ted Molczan ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 28 2003 - 19:38:50 EST