Thursday, November 11, 2010

11 on 11-11

Got to go out for an hour this evening. Armed with a list, I actually ended up with a perfect score which might be a first for me. By 'perfect score' I mean that see everything that is on my list from the time I go outside til the time I come in. I actually did better since I actually saw a few more including the ones on my list.

Here's the time-line for evening of:
Date: 11-Nov-2010 Thursday


6:42 PM - Resurs 1-4 Rocket - 2.8 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 1998-043-G
Oh yeah! Ol Faithful! Sighting #17.

6:52 PM - SkyMed 2 - 3.4 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 2007-059-A
This is my third sighting of COSMO-SkyMed 2, the Italian earth observation satellite. A quick note, the final COSMO-SkyMed satellite, SkyMed 4, was launched on Nov 6th 2010. I'm hoping to grab a glimpse of this satellite (and its Delta 2 rocket) sometime this weekend.

6:56 PM - Gravity ProbeB - 3.4 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 2004-014-A
This is my first sighting of the Gravity Probe B. The goal of this satellite is to measure spacetime curvature near the earth. and thereby the stress-energy tensor (which is related to the distribution and the motion of matter in space) in and near Earth. This will provide a test of general relativity, gravitomagnetism and related models. Yeah, it all sounds like Star Trek to me. The wiki page goes into great detail and is pretty interesting to read.

6:58 PM - ??? - -1 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: none
This was a giant blue fireball that had a tail about 10 degrees long. It was heading NW to NE. It lasted a long time (about 2 to 3 seconds) compared to most shooting stars I see. Since it was in the north around the Big Dipper, this possibly was from the upcoming Leonids which center around the constellation Leo. Check out this picture, which is approximately the type of fireball I saw.

6:59 PM - Shijian6-3 LMr - 3.0 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 2008-053-C
This is my third sighting of this Long March 4B rocket body used to launch Shijian 6E and 6F.

7:02 PM - Cosmos 1844 Rocket - 3.4 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 1987-041-B
This is my first sighting of this Zenit-2 rocket body which was used to launch Kosmos 1844, a Russian Tselina-2 ELINT satellite.

7:03 PM - Helios 1B - 2.8 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 1999-064-A
This is my seventh sighting of Helios 1B, the French photo-recon satellite.

7:12 PM - ??? - 3.0 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: none
This object was a very brief, orange shooting star that was heading into the SE.

7:17 PM - Iridium 4 Dl Rocket - 3.4 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 1997-020-F
This is my second sighting of this Delta II rocket used to launch Iridium 4.

7:37 PM - ISS - -0.5 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 1998-067-A
This is my eighth sighting of the International Space Station.

7:40 PM - SkyMed 1 - 4.3 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: - 2007-023-A
I'm taking a guess on this one. I could very well have been seeing crap for this one. Usually the site I do my research on will have SOMETHING that is nearby about the time I see something. But this one, is a bit of a stretch. It's possible that this was actually an airplane and since I was looking for the ISS in a few minutes, I may not have looked at it long enough.

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