Another fine night, USA 193 bright & a Lacrosse 3 flare

Friday evening and Sunday evening saw two other observing opportunities. On Friday it remained restricted to Lacrosse 3 & the Lacrosse 5 rk (97-064A & 05-016B), as clouds came in at a certain point (this made me miss a predicted -8 Iridium flare alas). I saw Lacrosse 3 (97-064A) flare to mag +0.5 however at 23:30:44 UTC (Jul 20).

Sunday night was very fine however, and I catched Lacrosse 3 & 4, plus IGS 4A/R2 (07-005A) and USA 193 (06-057A). The latter was quite bright (+0.5) while passing in the northwest. The second of the two images below shows it as it is just disappearing out of sight behind the roof. The other image shows IGS 4A/R2.

USA 193 was 2.3s early relative to Ted's elset 07202.04020244.

(click images to enlarge)

Note: the time indicated in above image is in error, apologies.

Observing again

Last night was very clear, and I finally could get myself to observe again after a 2-month period of inactivity (see previous post).

In 3 hours observing time I catched a nice batch of objects: USA 193 (06-057A), IGS 4A/R2 (07-005A), Lacrosse 3 (97-064A), Lacrosse 4 (00-047A), the Lacrosse 5 rk (05-016B) and a nice -2 flare of Iridium 14 (99-032A). I also visually observed IGS 1B (03-009B) but the trail ends on the image were to marginal to measure.

Below pictures showing:

- the Japase radar reco satellite IGS 4A/R2 and the American radar reco satellitre Lacrosse 3 in one and the same image, in Cassiopeia;
- the flare of Iridium 14.

(click images to enlarge)

Note: the times listed in the Iridium flare picture are 10 seconds off from the real time

Inoperative period

Just a note that SatTrackCam/Cospar 4353 due to circumstances has been inoperative for a while, and might continue to be so for a while. Apart from the very bad weather we are experiencing the past weeks, a reason for this is in a tragic personal loss affecting my life currently.