My Assistant
Mystery bright satellite, Need help identifying it |
Apr 13 2007, 06:42 AM
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Member ![]() ![]() ![]() 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. -------------------- Eric P / MizarKey
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MizarKey Mystery bright satellite Apr 13 2007, 06:42 AM
nprev One of the Iridium comsats? Those are known for pr... Apr 13 2007, 03:33 PM
MizarKey According to Heavens Above, there wasn't an ir... Apr 13 2007, 03:42 PM
djellison Iridiums also start and finish very quickly...this... Apr 13 2007, 04:37 PM
tasp Zygorthian raiders? Apr 13 2007, 05:50 PM
nprev Yep, gotta watch them Zygorths...
Doug's pr... Apr 14 2007, 03:29 AM![]() ![]() |
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