Mark Hanning-Lee writes:
>I have been off the list since September, but wanted
>to share this observation.
>
>Saturday 11/22 my wife & I were in Joshua Tree
>National Park, CA, a few miles S of the W entrance.
>About long 116.3 W, lat 34.1 N, elevation 920 m. We
>were looking at sats and Comet Encke, and noticed a
>striking phenomenon.
>
>A group of 3 objects crossed the sky from the West to
>the south. First saw them in the west about 30 deg
>high near Altair. (They may have appeared earlier but
>this was when we noticed them.)
>At 19:31 local time = 3:31 11/23 UTC.
>Not timing precisely so +- 1 minute.
>
I suspect that this is the decay of #28084, Cosmos 2399 deb C. The final
two elsets that have been published for this are:
Cosmos 2399 deb C 226 x 173 km
1 28084U 03035C 03325.95988775 .05438230 74591-5 11866-2 0 209
2 28084 64.9122 199.5078 0040600 74.7303 285.8173 16.27502088 532
Cosmos 2399 deb C 178 x 144 km
1 28084U 03035C 03326.93968715 .15227562 77094-5 48605-3 0 264
2 28084 64.9369 195.7759 0026098 80.6253 280.0384 16.41683098 699
A summary of my final Decay Watch notice is:
_____________________________________________________________________
Object: #28084 = 03- 35 C = Cosmos 2399 deb
Newly catalogued small debris of unknown origin released from the
Cosmos 2399 Russian military photo-reconnaissance satellite
launched on August 12, 2003.
(Dimensions and mass unknown)
Decay predictions:
Source Prediction made Predicted decay at Latitude Longitude
UTC UTC deg deg
SCC Nov 23 03:57 Nov 23 03:28 +-49m 53.4 N 136.6 W
SatEvo Nov 24 21:00 Nov 23 04:32 +-2h 34.6 N 83.7 E
Note: Elsets were few and far between, and late to appear. My estimated
elset for the final equator crossing is:
Cosmos 2399 deb C 130 x 116 km
1 28084U 03035C 03327.18243893 .97901213 15016+2 42593-3 0 90268
2 28084 64.9326 194.8298 0010552 80.5107 279.6086 16.56364584 735
_____________________________________________________________________
The orbit before my "final" one is...
Cosmos 2399 deb C 151 x 128 km
1 28084U 03035C 03327.12193730 .34446844 10725+1 33300-3 0 90268
2 28084 64.9344 195.0674 0017324 80.5394 279.6564 16.49949172 722
...and this, according to Mike McCants's Latlong program, makes a pass
over Mark's area as follows:
UTC
Hr Mn Sc Lat(N) Long(W)
3 28 0 40.8 122.4
3 29 0 37.3 119.7
3 30 0 33.8 117.3
3 31 0 30.2 115.2
3 32 0 26.6 113.2
3 33 0 22.9 111.3
I also note that it passed through perigee at ~03:15 UTC.
Alan
--
Alan Pickup / COSPAR 2707: 55.8968N 3.1989W +208m (WGS84 datum)
Edinburgh / SatEvo Home Page: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/
Scotland / Decay Watch: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/
*
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 26 2003 - 18:35:25 EST