Tuesday 6 January 2009

Bright SKYMED 2 surprise

While waiting for USA 32 this evening, I was suprised by a bright object in a north-south trajectory majestically sailing through the zenith at 18:29 UTC. It was magnitude -2 for tens of seconds. I quickly re-aimed the camera and took this photograph:

(click image to enlarge)


On this photograph, where the object disappears behind the roof, it was already slightly less bright than only a few tens of seconds earlier.

It turned out to be SKYMED 2 (07-059A), an Italian Earth Observation Satellite launched a year ago on December 9th 2007.

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