Thanks, Ed, for your observations! Insat 2D is now easy and conveniently placed for Europe (and South Africa??) but quickly drifting East. I had a gap in the clouds and found Insat 2D about 1 hour after iota Ceti passed above the satellite - the position where Ed Cannon first discovered this bright 87 second flasher. First flash was about +3.5, later flashes were not (much) below +4.0, but I could not see it at 1-power, because I couldn't even see the reference stars among clouds and city lights, at only 14 deg. alt. First obs before 19:51:01, first accurate time 19:53:52.6, last 20:17:09.8 UTC 2001-10-24 from site 5918. Dec. -11, RA 01:24 to 01:52 - neither Ed nor I saw the start or end of flashing ! With the long flash episodes, it may even be flashing when you read this - at least try tomorrow , or week end. Insat 2D 4.0 2.0 0.0 5.0 d 10 35943 x 33194 km 1 24820U 97027B 01294.18414061 -.00000101 00000-0 00000-0 0 3865 2 24820 3.1678 82.6531 0335723 216.4921 141.2932 1.04791073 16771 -- bjorn.gimle@tietotech.se (office) -- -- b_gimle@algonet.se (home) http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle -- -- COSPAR 5919, MALMA, 59.2576 N, 18.6172 E, 23 m -- -- COSPAR 5918, HAMMARBY, 59.2985 N, 18.1045 E, 44 m -- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Cannon" <ecannon@mail.utexas.edu> To: "Bjorn Gimle" <b_gimle@algonet.se> Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 4:16 PM Subject: Iridium 24 and re: Insat 2D seen again Friday, Oct. 19 Hi Björn, Last night (Oct. 19 UTC) I failed to find Insat 2D, possibly due to conditions or maybe due to looking at wrong time or place. There are a lot of trees at the museum grounds, and so when the sky's not too good it's hard to find things low in the east. Anyway, on the previous night I was able to see Insat 2D from 2:12:24.3 until at least 2:55:31.0, when it was getting fainter than +6.5 or maybe +7. (I'm still uncertain as to what magnitudes I can see with my 10x50 binoculars, but it's definitely fainter than +7.5 on a good night and above most of the atmospheric extinction [and city glow to the east].) So what I don't know for either night is when it started flashing, as I picked it up somewhere in mid-episode. I had a very good Iridium 24 pass in twilight last night. The first one was maybe -4 (?), and two or three of the others were -2 at least. The faintest of the following timed flashes was probably +3 or brighter. (By the way, I don't understand all of these timings, e.g. #15, but know that there are two solar panels as well as the three antennae.) Some of the maxima seemed kind of "smeared" -- an effect I see from time to time on bright specular flashers. Iridium 24 (97-082B, 25105) 00 0:30:00.00 +/- 0.05 (very close) 05 -- 0:32:03.37 -4 06 15.05 0:32:18.42 07 9.27 0:32:27.69 08 9.30 0:32:36.99 09 50.95 0:33:27.94 10 9.21 0:33:37.15 11 101.98 0:35:19.13 12 9.09 0:35:28.22 13 60.46 0:36:28.68 14 9.30 0:36:37.98 15 3.47 0:36:41.45 16 9.24 0:36:50.69 17 34.93 0:37:25.62 18 9.20 0:37:34.82 19 31.41 0:38:06.23 I was able to see some other fainter flashes that I didn't time. Clear, dark nights and bug-free computing -- Ed C. At 03:39 PM 10/18/01 +0200, you wrote: >Real interesting! I will have it 3 degrees below iota Ceti at 02:43 local >time (11 degrees above horizon) on Saturday, which may be clear. > >Altitude increases to 18,23,25 then down to 9 degrees on the evening of the >25th, returning on Nov.11 ! > ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Oct 24 2001 - 16:57:55 EDT