Monday 6 March 2006

A no-show of Lacrosse 5, and timings off again?

Quicksat predicted two good near-zenith passes this evening, of both the Lacrosse 5 Rocket stage (2005-016B, #28647) and the payload itself, Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A, #28646).

The rocket stage indeed made a fine pass: it was easily visible at magnitude ~ +2 with the naked eye, being somewhat irregular in brightness. The trail shows up well on the image with no dificulty in the measurements. It was about 0.3 seconds early according to my data: as my latest Lacrosse 5 data obtaineed a few nights ago were some 0.25 seconds early too, I start to worry again...

The payload, Lacrosse 5 itself, made a no-show an hour later. Predicted to be mag. +2.1 it should have been easily visible: but I failed to see it with the naked eye and there is no trace of it on the obtained image too.

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