A few days ago, I was out observing, waiting for the ISS to come, and made a *very* unusual observation. It must have been a satellite, presumably tumbling, as it did some very irregular stuff. I noted as much as I could about it, so if any of the experts on the list who know how to do it could try to figure out what it was, I'd be really thankful. So, it was the morning of July 25th, 2001, 04:00 LT (02:00 UT) plus/minus a few minutes. I was near 8.66E, 50.50N. The satellite rose in the Northeast, underneath Perseus, flashing irregularly to -2 or -3m with a period between 10 and 20 seconds between flashes. It passed above the three brightest stars in Aries (the little triangle which is all you can see of the constellation from lightpolluted sites), then went towards the south, where I lost track of it. I'd say it set in the south or south-southeast. Between the bright flashes, the satellite varied between invisible (less than 5m) and +2m in brightness. I assume not many satellites with this behavior followed this path at this time and location, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out which one it is, but I don't know how, and with what data. If someone could tell me what it was, I'd be very grateful! Thanks in advance... Ulrich >>www.analemma.de<< ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sat Aug 04 2001 - 15:11:21 PDT