Hi anyone interested,
For the past week or so I have been using part of my CoSaTrak system to
search the orbital plane of USA 116 ( 95066A, #23728) and have come up with
the following:
Unknown #1
14 Nov 2000 00h42m09.7sUT RA 22h44.5m Dec -56d 54.6m J2000.0
00h42m16.9sUT RA 22h50.3m Dec -57d 13.1m
Magnitude +5.3 to +7.3 slow vary during 17 sec observation window
I had trouble with time signals so time could be in error by perhaps as much
as a second or so.
This was subsequently identified by Ted Molczan as 83008A #13791 NOSS 4(a).
Then followed a spell of cloudy weather until clear last night when I got
the following:
USA 129 96072A # 24680 - search elements from Mike McCants
Nov 19 2000 20h39m09.9sUT RA09h25.6m Dec-70d11.9' J2000.0
20h39m19.5sUT RA09h06.8m Dec-70d41.0'
20h39m30.3sUT RA08h42.7m Dec-71d04.3'
gave one very bright 2 second flash to about magnitude +1 then mag +5.9
for time it took to traverse the approximate 5 degree field of view of
the CCD surveillance camera.
Using search elements by Mike McCants, based on Tony Beresford's
observations of possibly USA116, I got the following:
USA 116? 95066A #23728
19 Nov 2000 23h24m03.3sUT RA 11h34.9m Dec -46d27.5m J2000.0
23h24m10.0sUT RA 11h28.2m Dec -45d57.6m
magnitude +7.0 steady- faded into earths shadow at second position. Due to
the low elevation ( az 137 el 17 deg approx) there were not many stars in
the field of view and the faintest star visible was only about +7.5 so
positions may be a little out due to lack of suitable reference stars- the
first point being better than the second.
All these positions were obtained from the video recording made of the
passes and using the program GUIDE 7 to read of objects coordinates.
Cheers
Greg
PS I have a Cospar site number somehwere but have been unable to find it in
all my rubbish so far.
My coordinates are:
Long 18.512944 East, Lat 33.940583 South - (GPS), altitude 10 metres ( from
my home in Pinelands in
the city of Cape Town ( complete with its brilliantly lit sky!)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Nov 20 2000 - 09:03:51 PST