It was a beautiful evening last night. The sun is setting around 7pm, I'm getting really good sessions in at the moment since I'm not missing alot of the early satellite and I'm still catching all but the later satellites as well. Yay. In about an hour and a half I spotted 24 satellites. That's one shy of tying my record of 25 set on Oct 8th 2010. The neighbors mostly played nice, the moon was taking its time rising in the east. It wasn't too cold out (though by the end of the evening, I couldn't really feel my cheeks. I honestly should have had the record. I came inside briefly to see if the Mrs was done putting lil N to bed which she was, but she was watching a TV show. There were 3 more satellite, two of which should have been too bright to miss, so I went outside for another 7 minutes. I somehow or another failed to spot any of those three. I think I need to 'recalibrate' my watch since I believe that it is off by nearly a minute which actually does matter in this game. I have no idea how many repeat items I have, though when putting them in my spreadsheet, I noticed that many were from the 70s and 80s, so... I guess we'll see.
Oh, and I managed to see one early this morning peeping through the front window which is rather hard since you can't really look through the big windows since they have screens that that actually blocks most of the light, so I end up peering through the narrow windows next to the door. Plus, everything that I had a chance of seeing was in the east, which faces the street and its 30 mercury streetlamps. Combine that with the lights inside and its is very difficult unless the satellite is REALLY bright.
Here's the time-line for the evening of:
Date: 18-Feb-2011 Friday
7:05 PM - Name: Tansuo 1 LM2r - Magnitude: 2.9
Int'l Designator: 2004-012-C
This is my tenth sighting of this Long March 2C rocket body. This rocket was used to launch Tansuo 1, a Chinese stereo imaging satellite.
7:09 PM - Name: Cosmos 1242 Rocket - Magnitude: 2.7
Int'l Designator: 1981-008-B
This is my second sighting of this Vostok-2M rocket which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 1242 in 1981.
7:13 PM - Name: Cosmos 2228 Rocket - Magnitude: 4.1
Int'l Designator: 1992-094-B
This is my second sighting of of this Tsyklon-3 rocket which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 2228.
7:18 PM - Name: Breeze-M tank - Magnitude: 3.6
Int'l Designator: 2010-069-C
This is my first sighting of this Briz-M tank. This object was part of a Proton-M Briz-M rocket which launched the KA-SAT satellite, which telecommunications satellite which services Europe and the Middle East exclusively using 82 Ka spot beam transmitters. Each 'spot' can handle a throughput of 475 Mb/s. Dang!
7:24 PM - Name: Sich 1 - Magnitude: 3.3
Int'l Designator: 1995-046-A
This is my first sighting of the Sich 1 satellite, the first Ukrainian Earth observation satellite. It's main function was to observe and track things like pieces of Arctic ice. It was launched using a Tsyklon-3 rocket. There was a piggyback satellite as well. It was a Chilean satellite called FASAT-Alpha, however it did not separate from Sich 1 and had to be muted / disabled.
7:25 PM - Name: Cosmos 1709 Rocket - Magnitude: 4.0
Int'l Designator: 1985-116-B
This is my first sighting of this Kosmos-3M rocket. It was used to launch Kosmos 1709, a Russian Pirus military communications and navigation satellite. The first Pirus satellite was launched in 1974 and as of 2010, 99 of these satellites have been deployed.
7:26 PM - Name: ISS - Magnitude: -1.5
Int'l Designator: 1998-067-A
This is my tenth sighting of the International Space Station.
7:29 PM - Name: Meteor 2-2 - Magnitude: 4.8
Int'l Designator: 1977-002-A
This is my first sighting of Meteor 2-2, a Russian meteorological satellite. It was launched in 1977 using a Vostok-2M rocket.
7:31 PM - Name: Cosmos 1805 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.4
Int'l Designator: 1986-097-B
This is my first sighting of this Tsyklon-3 rocket which launched the Russian Tselina-R ELINT satellite Kosmos 1805 in 1986.
7:32 PM - Name: Cosmos 1184 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.1
Int'l Designator: 1980-044-B
This is my first sighting of this Vostok-2M rocket. It was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 1184.
7:36 PM - Name: Cartosat 2 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.5
Int'l Designator: 2007-001-E
This is my first sighting of PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket. This PSLV was developed by the Indian Space Research Organization. The PSLV has four stages and is used to put objects into sun synchronous orbit. This particular rocket was used to launch 4 satellites (this was the first time a PSLV has attempted to launch four satellites). The main satellite was Cartosat 2, an Indian earth observation satellite. The other 3 satellites were the Indian SRE (Space Capsule Recovery Experiment), the Indonesian LAPAN-TUBsat (remote sensing for natural resources and weather forecasting) and the Argentinian PEHUENSAT-1 (an experimental satellite).
7:37 PM - Name: Cosmos 1154 Rocket - Magnitude: 2.2
Int'l Designator: 1980-008-B
This is my first sighting of this Vostok-2M satellite which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 1154 in 1980.
7:40 PM - Name: shooting star - Magnitude: 2.0
Int'l Designator: none
This was a very quick, bright white shooting star. I don't believe there are any known meteor showers at the moment, so this is probably some random piece of something or another.
7:41 PM - Name: Shijian 6-3B -or- SJ-6F - Magnitude: 3.8
Int'l Designator: 2008-053-B
This is my third sighting of the Chinese Shijian 6F space environment satellites. It is rumored that the Shijian 6 satellites are actually for ELINT. This satellite was launched using a Long March 4B (CZ-4B) rocket.
7:41 PM - Name: Cosmos 1005 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.1
Int'l Designator: 1978-045-B
This is my second sighting of this Vostok-2M rocket which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 1005.
7:46 PM - Name: Meteor 1-31 Rocket - Magnitude: 2.8
Int'l Designator: 1981-065-B
This is my fifth sighting of this Vostok-2M rocket which launched the Russian meteorological satellite Meteor 1-31.
7:47 PM - Name: Cosmos 1633 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.1
Int'l Designator: 1985-020-B
This is my first sighting of this Tsyklon-3 rocket which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Kosmos 1633.
7:54 PM - Name: EGP H1 Rocket - Magnitude: 5.9
Int'l Designator: 1986-061-C
This is my first sighting of this Japanese H-1 rocket. It was used to launch the EGP (Experimental Geodetic Payload) satellite. The EGP is a sphere covered with 318 mirrors for reflecting sunlight _AND_ 1436 cube corners for reflecting laser beams. Cool picture here! Back to the H-1 (or H-I), it was launched 9 times between 1986 and 1992 and had no failures.
7:58 PM - Name: Secor 1 Rocket - Magnitude: 6.0
Int'l Designator: 1964-001-A
This is my first sighting of this Thor-SLV2A Agena-D rocket. It was launched in 1964 and its payload was SECOR 1, a US military geodesy satellite. Here is a pic of one of the SECOR satellites. The Agena-D was the upper stage of the Thor SLV rocket. I'm actually guessing that the Thor was the Thorad-Agena rocket. My brain is fried from this post so I'm starting to care less and less, in case you're still reading.
8:05 PM - Name: Shijian6-3Aptr -or- CZ-4B DEB - Magnitude: 3.6
Int'l Designator: 2008-053-D
This is my third sighting of this piece of space junk from a Long March 4B rocket which was used to launch some of the Shijian 6E and 6f satellites. (I saw Shijian 6F earlier in the evening.
8:10 PM - Name: Cosmos 405 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.7
Int'l Designator: 1971-028-B
This is my first time seeing this my first time seeing this Vostok-2M rocket which was used to launch the Russian Tselina-D ELINT satellite Cosmos 405.
8:10 PM - Name: Meteor 2-10 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.7
Int'l Designator: 1983-109-B
This is my first sighting of this Vostok-2M rocket which was used to launch the Russian meteorological satellite Meteor 2-10.
8:13 PM - Name: Iridium 38 tum - Magnitude: 5.6
Int'l Designator: 1997-069-E
This is my first sighting of the tumbling Iridium satellite Iridium 38. Based on some web reports, it appears that Iridium 38 lost its ability to maintain its correct position in the Iridium constellation. It was replaced by Iridium 82.
8:14 PM - Name: Cosmos 1452 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.4
Int'l Designator: 1983-031-B
This is my second sighting of this Kosmos-3M which was used to launch the Russian Strela-2M communications satellite Kosmos 1452.
Here's the time-line for the morning of:
Date: 19-Feb-2011 Saturday
6:24 AM - Name: IGS 1 H2A Rocket - Magnitude: 2.6
Int'l Designator: 2003-009-C
This is my third sighting of this Japanese H2-A rocket body which was used to launch the Japanese military recon satellite IGS 1. IGS stands for Information Gathering Satellite. Kudos to the Japanese for naming the satellite for exactly what it does.
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