The evening of December 29 2013 started clear, so I did a small survey of a part of the geostationary belt. Main focus of the session was PAN, as well as Mentor 4 and 6.
Inspecting the images I found an
unidentified object in near-Geostationary orbit some 4 degrees east of
PAN, between
Mentor 6 and
NSS 5, on several images (
positions here). The image below shows it near M42, the Orion nebula, near 19:17 UT:
click image to enlarge
In addition to the UNID you can also see a classified satellite at left,
Mentor 6 (2012-034A), a
SIGINT satellite also known under the code name
Advanced Orion. At right are two commercial geostationary satellites,
NSS 5 (1997-053A) and
Galaxy 26 (1999-005A).
Cees Bassa in the Netherlands and
Greg Roberts in South Africa also observed what is likely the same UNID object later that night. While it is not easy to fit a reliable orbit to such a relatively short span of observations, the suggestion is an object with an inclination near 0 and a
Mean Motion of about 0.92 revolutions per day, i.e. an object near Geostationary altitudes.
The Mean Motion could suggest an old object being moved to a
Graveyard Orbit. If this is the case, we haven't been able to identify which 'old' object it is yet.
Another option is that this is a
new object. The only likely candidate in that case is the Russian satellite
Express AM-5 which was
launched on December 26th. This object seems to have been temporarily "lost" by
JSpOC: as I write this (Jan 2),
Space-Track does not list orbital elements later than December 26th (when it was still in a temporary transfer orbit).
For the moment, Mike McCants has given it the name
UNK 131229 (with the acronym
UNK meaning "
Unknown").
This observing session also served to check on
PAN (2009-047A). PAN is a highly mobile satellite and often moves position in May and December (I have written on the mystery of this satellite
before). Not this time, it seems: it is still at the position it has been in for several months, forming a trio with the commercial satellites
Yahsat 1B and
Intelsat 10:
click image to enlarge
Other classified objects imaged this night were the old
SIGINT Mercury 1 (
USA 105, "
Advanced Vortex", 1994-054A), and the SIGINT
Mentor 4 (
USA 202, 2009-001A).
Mercury 1 was placed at 48 E and recovered by me about a year ago.
click images to enlarge
During this observing session, I captured a bright irregular orange light moving across the sky: a '
Thai Lantern' ( a miniature hot-air balloon). They are the cause of many false fireball and re-entry reports. Here it is, moving through Orion while carried by the wind:
Two days earlier, on December 27, I also did my periodic check on
Prowler (90-097E), using the 61-cm Cassegrain of Sierra Stars Observatory in Markleeville, California (MPC G68).
I concluded the evening of the 29th by making some shots of
M31, the
Andromeda Galaxy. Unfortunately, some thin haze came in after a while. The image below is a stack of 16 haze-free images of 30 seconds exposure each, with a CLS filter (against light pollution - the images were taken from Leiden town center)) and Zeiss 2.8/180mm lens piggyback on the mount of my C6:
click image to enlarge
