RE: [amsat-bb] Visible Sats

["Johann Lochner" <lochner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<B17EB7B34580D311BE38525405DF623225ECA8@atc-mail-db.atctraining.com.au>
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
Sender: owner-AMSAT-BB@AMSAT.Org
Precedence: bulk

Hi Scott and Tony,

 > > Has anyone seen the smaller Satellites when they are potentially
 > > visible according to tracking software.  Are they large enough to
 > > see their reflections?
 >
 > Some may be just visible, but they are at the limits of the naked
 > eye. For example, SO-35 typically has a magnitude around 6.8, which

 > is around the limit of the unaided eye (if you could see it, it
 > would be the faintest star).  Mir and ISS, by contrast are
 > somewhere around magnitude 0 or even -1 , if I recall (and as many
 > people know, are very easy to spot).

Don Gardner recently sent me the following message:

 > I received a request to observe Sunsat due to a report that it was
 > visible at 1x.  It's a relatively small object but shaped as a
 > cube so I would think that it has the potential to become brighter
 > that the predicted +8 mag.
 >
 > Ref:
 > http://sunsat.ee.sun.ac.za/photo4.htm
 >
 > Last evening I observed it with a 6" Dob and for about 15 seconds
 > beginning at 02:15:30 UTC; 7 April it reached about a 5.5 mag.
 > Otherwise it was about a 7.5-8.0 mag.
 >
 > Anyone ever see this object at 1x?
 >
 > Cheers
 > Don Gardner  39.1802 N, 76.8408 W, 110m ASL (New GPS)
 > Homepage: http://hometown.aol.com/mir16609/

Any naked eye (1x) observation reports would be most welcome.

Kind regards,
Johann Lochner, ZR1CBC
Sunsat SO-35 Control Team

+------------------------------------------------+
   JG Lochner  ESL, Universiteit van Stellenbosch
   e-pos:      lochner@ing.sun.ac.za
   webtuiste:  http://esl.ee.sun.ac.za/~lochner
+------------------------------------------------+

----
Via the amsat-bb mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org