IGS 1B

A late report on yesterday evening, due to circumstances.

Good clear sky again. First tried to cover the passes of USA 186 and USA 129. Both were too faint this time however. USA 129 nevertheless made one short bright flash (mag. 0) at 21:17:32 UTC.

Over the past two days, other observers (e.g. Pierre, Bruce) too commented on the irregular brightness behaviour of 2005-042A (USA 186), just as I did in my previous post and report on my April 4th observation.

Yesterday I did catch IGS 1B (2003-009B), the Japanese radar Intelligence Gathering Satellite. It starts to slowly get higher in the sky during passes, and hence slowly into view. I viewed and photographed it as it emerged out of eclipse just above the roof of the opposite building. It was very bright, mag.+1.5 and brightening. On the photograph, the trail ends behind the roof, so hence I could only measure the startpoint. the trail is clear and crisp on the image, and the resulting point is almost exactly 1s early with regard to elset 06093.83849704.