Re: Sattelite Track or Meteor?

[hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com (Herbert R Johnson)]

On Sun, 05 Nov 2000 07:02:19 -0600, Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com> wrote:
*>The first frame of the evening taken with TOM had a prominent N-S satellite 
*>track.  The track was much brighter in I than in V, and was tumbling 
*>rapidly.  It was taken at 7:39 PM CST on 4 November 2000 with the telescope 
*>looking roughly 1 degree N and 10 degrees West.  Anyone know of a tumbling 
*>object going over at that time?  Since it is much brighter in the IR, could 
*>it be a meteor?  Very tight cork screw image.  Possibly 100 turns in going 
*>across the frame.
*>

Tom, it turns out there is a growing interest in observing satellites. There
are many Web sites devoted to this topic. I'm told one can key in their
location and date and get a nice report (and viewing charts) for satellites
INCLUDING their magnitude, rates of tumbling, and so on. I spent an evening
with a set of these charts at one starparty and two of us took turns at
'satellite spotting' for a few hours. It's kinda neat to see whether a
prediction is spot-on or not - we saw over a dozen objects and a number of
kinds of behavior.

Some of my observing colleagues frown at this kind of activity, but it
provides in my opinion good opportunities to improve observing and sky
orientation skills, and one can do it with little or NO observing
equipment. Also there is considerable skill and effort by those volunteers who
maintain lists of objects, or whom report the activities they see. Reports
such as yours would be appreciated by these groups, in particular regarding
color as most observing is probably visual, and not otherwise easily
captured by video camera.

I suspect the object is brighter in IR both because of "air mass" - some
of the object's solar illumination or reflection as filtered through
the atmosphere - and because aluminum or solar panels may be more or less
reflective in the IR. Your tumbling rate of about 1 per second (assuming
a 100 second exposure) is entirely consistent with satellites or rocket
stages I've seen myself, some of them are real "blinkies".

Why not upload these images to an appropriate Web site, and see who can
reduce the "data" on the tracks? Or at least produce a nice .jpg of
the trail? I might give the latter a try...Meanwhile a Web search on
satellite tracking will no doubt find key sites for reducing the data.
My satellite charts for instance came from:

http://hometown.aol.com/mir16609

who also gave a talk on this subject at that starparty in PA this summer.
Give him my regards.

Herb Johnson

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