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Mystery bright satellite, Need help identifying it
MizarKey
post Apr 13 2007, 06:42 AM
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Group: Members
Posts: 295
Joined: 2-March 04
From: Central California
Member No.: 45



I was making a quick trip to the store tonight at 9:08pm (p.s.t) and as usual I looked up at the sky. Beautiful, cold night. There was a bright light moving east, when I saw it it was near Leo's tail. I watched for over a minute, scrutinizing it to make sure it wasn't a plane. It was a steady light with no blinking lights and it faded rather quickly toward the end of my viewing. It must have been at least Mag. 1 or greater. Brighter than nearby Saturn for sure. It was moving relatively slowly and in the last 15 seconds or so it faded, going into Earth's shadow I assume. The info below is from "Heaven's Above" and does not show a bright satellite at 9:08pm local. ISS is the closest time-wise but it's path doesn't bring it anywhere near Leo.
I found a link in another satellite related forum to a site called Real Time Satellite tracking, but it's not as easy to use as Heaven's Above and while I could find which satellites are over my house tonight, I couldn't find out how to project them into the sky to see which one this could have been.

Any help will be appreciated. Here's the Heaven's Above data for my location and I've attached the sky map with a red line showing the approximate path of what I saw.

Search Period Start: 12:00 Thursday, 12 April, 2007
Search Period End: 01:00 Friday, 13 April, 2007
Observer's Location: Visalia ( 36.3300°N, 119.2910°W)
Local Time: Pacific Daylight Time (GMT - 7:00)
Limiting magnitude: 3.5

Click on the time of max. altitude to get a star chart and other details. Satellite Starts Max. Altitude Ends
Name Mag Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az. Time Alt. Az.
Cosmos 1143 Rocket 3.3 19:45:59 10° SSW 19:48:58 74° WSW 19:52:08 10° N
ISS 2.4 20:39:51 10° NW 20:41:04 12° NNW 20:42:17 10° N
Lacrosse 2 3.1 21:01:43 10° N 21:06:06 41° ENE 21:06:49 39° E

Thanks in advance for any help.
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Eric P / MizarKey
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