There's an article in http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/v5i3/v5i3.html titled "LMT Data Reduction Continues" that contains some interesting data on the numbers of "uncorrelated targets", aka UCTs, (unknowns) detected by a NASA optical debris survey. The basic message is that they saw hundreds of UCTs which, if catalogued by USSPACECOM, presumably would be assigned 8xxxx catalog numbers and not be disseminated by OIG. Most of the UCTs NASA detected were quite faint, but several had an "absolute" visual magnitude as bright as 5. It appears that NASA defines a.v.m. for satellites using a nominal range of 1,000 km -- I'm not sure about the phase angle. In any event, some may have been bright enough to be seen by SeeSat observers. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 30 2000 - 08:16:28 PST