The NOSS 3-4 centaur rocket (07-027B): a nice new object

June 15 2007 saw the launch of NRO's NOSS 3-4 satellites. They belong to the new US Navy twin satellite constellation (the old NOSS-es were trio's) the purpose of which is to pinpoint the origin of shipping communications.

The payload couple (07-027A & C) and the last stage NOSS 3-4r Centaur rocket (07-027B) are now being tracked by amateurs. For me, the Centaur stage (07-027B) is the most interesting, as it is bright. It is also slow moving. And making zenith-passes near midnight for my station at the moment. Which all makes it a fine photographic target.

The object slowly tumbles, as is apparent from a very slow variation in magnitude. Over the course of a minute or so, it varies between mag. +4 and +1.5 on a zenith pass.

Last week I observed the object for the first time, on 3 different nights including last night (I observed a fine list of other objects from my regular observing program as well on these nights).

On the first two nights I was greatly hampered by drifting fields of cumuli but could nevertheless capture the object through gaps in the cloud cover. Last night was clear and I could follow it along a large part of its trajectory, the slow amplitude in brightness due to the tumbling being very apparent. Below three images show the object as captured on the nights of July 29-30, 30-31 and July 31-Aug 1.

(click images to enlarge)

Last night the first (out of 3) image of the object suffered from an attempted counter-intelligence attack though ;-)

Frenkie, the cat of my neighbour, joined me at the courtyard that night and started to hug me and my camera tripod in the way cats do. As a result the first image I obtained contained a wobbled satellite trail and I did not measure it. I chased away Frenkie, as lovely as he is, and shot two more images one of which is shown above.

(Frenkie is now suspected to be back at his CIA headquarters, reporting to his commander, who carefully trained him: "Meooow, mission only partly accomplished").

I also had an Iridium flare path center coming almost exactly over my house last night. It concerned Iridium 67 (98-021F) and it flared brilliantly to at least mag. -8. The flare had a distinct yellow colour.

(click image to enlarge)

The previous night also saw a nice (less bright: mag -1) flare of Iridium 64 (98-021C):

(click image to enlarge)