With the gracious help of Ed Cannon and Björn Gimle in clear dark skies south of my place I spotted Superbird-A [#20040] tonight, Sunday, 12/9/02. Using 7 x 35mm binoculars, at 9:42 CST (3:42 UTC) I first noticed it 36 degrees up and at an azimuth of 199 degrees. Its beginning coordinates were close to, RA: 1 h 44 m, Dec: -9 d 53 m. Six minutes later I lost it at RA: 1 h 48 m, Dec: -10 d 0 m. It began its trek about 2 degrees west of Baten Kaitos (Zeta Ceti). [Cetus is an unremarkable constellation in my southern sky.] Flash by flash it moved ever so slowly rising only a few minutes of arc. About a minute after I spotted it I noticed a bright flash, one that, if I wouldn't have been looking through my binoculars, could easily have been naked eye visible. Then I tried for a couple minutes to see it naked eye but could not, even though its brightness seemed to be equal to Zeta Ceti's magnitude of +3.7. [Old eyes I guess.] The reflections reminded me of a tumbling iridium except that they were very regular (about 11 seconds apart) and were rather unvaried in intensity. I was disappointed last night by some ill-placed clouds but tonight I received a bonus that more than made up for last night's frustration. During the middle of the show while I was peering through my night vision scope, after I observed several nice flashes a beautiful slow-moving meteor drifted right through the picture, beginning and ending in my FOV, leaving an enduring train as it went. Now that was nice! The thing that amazes me about this particular phenomenon is that the light from this manmade object is being reflected from a satellite 36,000 km (21,600 miles) away! I just read that Superbird-A is more than 20 m long with both wings extended. I assume that the reflections we see are coming from the solar panels. Correct me if I'm wrong but, according to Ed and Björn it's beginning position is moving a degree or so westward each night and starts about a minute earlier each time. I hope others get a chance to brave the cold to catch a glimpse of this distant satellite. Good night, Tom NE Iowa USA Latitude: +42.473513 Longitude -92.360413 Meters above sea level: 274 GMT -6 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 09 2002 - 02:47:52 EST