June 15 OBS

Floyd Weaver (fweaver@nbn.net)
Mon, 16 Jun 1997 00:02:30 -0500 (CDT)

Hi all.
   Not a good night to observe sats but I did anyway. The moon is bright. 
One thing made it worth my while to be out. At 01:30 UTC I saw the best 
meteorite I ever saw. It was 15 deg up in the south and traveling west  
parallel to the horizen. I saw it for about 40 deg which took it 3 
seconds to travel. Tail was 10 deg long and almost one deg (half the 
thickness of my finger at arm length) thick! There was one blue green 
flash which left 2 deg of the tail that color. The rest of the time the 
fireball and trail were white. I out rule a decay in this case as I 
estimate 99.x% of sats do not fit this path. The 
above degrees and timings are my best amataur estimate. Now for the sats.

   I saw Rkt1 (24801) and Rkt2 (24802) of C2342. Rkt2 was moving faster 
than any I ever saw at 40 deg elv. Rkt1 was over head but it did not seem to 
move as fast. It's altitude was 230km and Rkt2 was only 190km!  Picked up 
the NOSS 2-2 trio between the dippers and followed 
them till they one by one entered the shadow. Saw Mir of course and some 
others but the above were the most note worthy.

40.3 North  76.4 West

Floyd Weaver
3 miles north of Lebanon Pa.
http://users.nbn.net/~fweaver