Failed - trail too faint (Lacrosse 4)

Saturday, October 15, 2005, 20:49:24

Just tried to image a pass of Lacrosse 4.

The almost full moon was already up, and it was
slightly hazy. Hence, the sky background came out
very bright on the image. The trail of Lacrosse 4
is visible on the image, but too faint to reliably
measure, alas.

Observations of Russell Eberst on the 13th yield
similar delta T's for Lacrosse 4 as my observations
from the 10th.

Clear sky and fine Lacrosse trail

Clear skies again at last! Yesterday and today the sky
was bright blue. Yesterday evening I managed to get
two fine pictures of Lacrosse 4 (00-047A, #26473), one
as it sailed across Andromeda at about +2.0, the other
while it was entering eclipse in Pegasus (hence only
the start of the track was measured for the latter
image).

The first image yielded a splendid well-defined trail.

In all, 3 positions. The 3rd point is perhaps less good
as the 1st and 2nd, as the trail already was becoming
faint due to eclipse entry.

The delta T's are quite consistent internally: the
satellite was 1.5 seconds late relative to Mike's 10 day
old elset 05273.79219807.

Foggy skies and Lacrosses

Saturday, October 08, 2005, 00:46:14 LT

After many days of bad weather, I tried to capture a
spy bird again. Earlier this evening I obtained a meagre
one point on Lacrosse 3 (97-064 A), obtained under very
poor conditions. The sky was very hazy (fog). Only the
beginpoint of the trail did I trust and report.

Tried to capture Lacrosse 2 as well somewhat earlier, but
the sky was still too bright and foggy.

Bad weather

We have bad weather here for over a week now. That is
not unusual in this time of the year. Expect the next
3-4 months to see only sporadic observing activity due
to this.

So for the moment, it is back to asteroids.....