Cirrus, and satellites

24 Aug 2005, 01:55 LT

Above picture is the Japanese spysat IGS 1B (03-009B, #27699) coming out of the earth shadow almost in the zenith, around 23:28:07 local time (21:28:07 UTC) this night. I saw it visually, coming out of eclipse and brightening rapidly to about mag +2.0.

Above picture resulted in a good position measured from the end point of the trail.

Conditions were rather poor this night. A pass of Lacrosse 2 (USA, 91-017A, #21147) suffered from fields of thin cirrus. The start of the trail was too ambiguous to measure, the end did yield one point.

Just like yesterday, the bank building opposite me had all the bright lights in their offices on: this while these offices were completely deserted.... This was a big nuisance, apart from being a waste of energy. I hope this is not going to be a new trend. being in the midst of a ciy allready is hard enough concerning the light pollution, and this is definitely notably decreasing my visual limiting magnitude. I have to shield my eyes against the glare!