Hollidays, Ötzi, a Deluge, and USA 179 (SDS 3-3)

For most of the month August, I have been out of the country, to Northern Italy. With my GF I visited Bozen/Bolzano in the Italian part of Tirol, to see Ötzi the glacier-mummie; then made a 2-week backpack hike through the Dolomite mountains, going from refugio (mountain hut) to refugio; and next visited Verona and Venice. In all, a very fine 3-week hollidays!

Shortly after getting back, I managed some limited observations on August 24: USA 186 and the USA 179 r.

Two days later, on the 26th of August, a deluge hit my country including Cospar 4353. An incredible amount (for our country) of precipitation fell: in places thsi amounted to over 140 mm, over 2 times the monthly amount, in only a few hours time. Especially in the east of the country, this led to floods and associated water troubles.

At Cospar 4353, some 60 mm of rain is the monthly normal for August. On the night 25-26 and morning of the 26th, in just 18 hours time, 78 mm of rain was recorded by the pluviometer of my weather station. Most of it fell in an hour time around 9:00 am.

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The days following this deluge, were mostly bad with clouds and rain. I managed to resume observations on the evening of August 30th, taking advantage of a short but bright clearing. Target was USA 179 (SDS 3-3), a US military communication satellite in a Molniya orbit.

As it turned out, the satellite was quite off in position compared to (at that time) a 25 days old elset. It was 3.4 degrees south of the predicted position:

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image made with Heavensat

I followed the object over the next nights, 31 Aug, 1 Sep and 2 Sep, in order to provide data for an orbital update. On August 31, the object was again snagged during a short but bright clearing, this time in Cepheus and closer to it's apogee. Below is a single image and a stack of the 4 images obtained:

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Compare the single images of 30 and 31 August, and to the stack of the August 31 to the stack of the September 2 images, all shown here at the same scale (full pixel resolution).

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The difference in angular speed at different parts of it's orbit is well visible.

Other objects imaged these nights were the STSS Demo 1 + 2 objects; MSX, IGS 1B, and on Sept 1 the Russian Progress-M 06M cargoship that had just been decoupled from the ISS the previous day.

Early March observations and pulsing (?) brightness of the STSS Demo-1

I am well behind on reporting on my March observations so far. I observed on the evenings of 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 and 16 March. Observed objects include:

The Lacrosses 2, 3 and 5; NOSS 3-1; USA 200; USA 129; The USA 144 decoy; STSS demo 1 and demo 2; and a number of strays.

The KH-12 KeyHole USA 129 (96-072A) is a favourite target, now it has come out of it's winter hiding. I observed a number of flares from this satellite again (alas all while the camera was closed). Below are two trail images from 7 and 16 March, showing it rising (16 March) and decsending (7 March):

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The STSS Demo 1 & 2 objects (09-052A & B) were also frequently targetted. On March 16, I captured a shortlived pulsating brightness behaviour for STSS Demo 1 that is very similar to the shortlived pulsating behaviour I captured for the other STSS Demo object (demo 2) on February 20. Liek on that occasion, the behaviour is present in the first 2 seconds of one single trail image (out of a series of several). below is the image showing the pulses in the early part of the trail (top), and below that are the brightness diagram, and a diagram of the delta T between the pulses (read and compare also the report for February 20). The period for the early part is a flat 0.16s.

I do not want to exclude, even though I cannot explain it, that it is some instrumental effect. This because it is again in the first 2 seconds of a trail.

Chasing satellites through clouds and unusual brightness behaviour of the STSS Demo 2

The evening of Saturday-Sunday 20-21 February saw a very dynamic weather situation. Fields of clouds came and went very rapidly: the sky could go from clear to clouded to clear to clouded again in a matter of minutes. It made it a big gamble whether a particular object would eb visible or not.

As it came to be, I hauled a nice batch of positions on several objects: Lacrosse 5 (05-016A), the Lacrosse 5 r/b (05-016B), the STSS Demo 2 (09-052B) and the NOSS 3-2 (03-054A & C) duo. I also photographed the NOSS 3-4 duo but the image was too much hampered by cliuds tp reliably measure it. I lost amongst others Lacrosse 4 and the STSS Demo 1 to clouds (the latter a pitty, as it was predicted to pass right through the Pleiades).

Most of the images have some clouds on them: some extensively. Below are a few pictures: from top to bottom they show the Lacrosse 5 r/b amidst clouds; The NOSS 3-2 duo passing between the Pleiades and the Hyades; and the STSS Demo 2 passing near capella and the three Goats:

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The STSS Demo 2 appears to show an unusual brightness variation in the first 2 seconds of the trail (the left part of the trail in below negative image), consisting of what appear to be a series of even spaced modest glints. Note the dashed appearance of the first part of the trail:

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Below is the brightness profile over the trail (grey small crossmarks are individual pixel values, the solid line is a 3 point average), and below that is a graph of the time between brightness maxima visible in the profile.

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Note in the second diagram how the time between maxima is very constant, at about 0.13 seconds, during roughly the first 2 seconds . After that, it begins to wildly vary. As the first diagram shows, the amplitude of the brightness variations is larger in those first 2 seconds too. In fact, after those first two seconds the variation is largely or completely random pixel variation.

The first 2 seconds of the trail are quite different in character from the rest of the trail though: a clear constant, larger amplitude pulsing behaviour. This is very interesting. A second image obtained on the STSS Demo 2 during the same pass showed a quite constant brightness.

Last observations of the year, and 2009 at a glance

December 2009 saw a lot of clouded sky, a few clear frosty skies, and lots of snow (for our country at least). After my December 6th observations (see previous post) I observed on December 13th (under modest conditions) and December 28th (under good conditions).

Targets imaged were the HEO objects USA 179 (04-034A), USA 184 (06-027A) and USA 198 (07-060A), and the STSS Demo objects (09-052A & B); and the LEO objects Lacrosse 2 (91-017A) and Lacrosse 5 (05-016A).

These are probably my last observations for this year, as today is overcast and tonight will see fireworks. So, what did 2009 bring on the observational front?

2009 was a good year. I observed on 77 nights, obtaining a total of 953 positions (8 visually, 945 photographically). They were spread over the year as follows:





These observations concern 32 different classified objects (both payloads and rocket boosters), plus a number of special-interest non-classified objects such as Space Shuttles, GOCE, and the Iridium 33 wreckage:

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Just for fun, I have also plotted all obtained positions on an RA/Declination map:

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The clustering in certain positions is because I tend to select sky areas with easily recognizable bright star patterns. This helps easy aiming of the camrea, and it also speedens initial star identifications during the astrometric reduction of the images.

An unidentified HEO object

Yesterday evening was very clear. I photographed the STSS Demo r/b (09-052C) using the EF 50/2.5 Macro, and then switched to the EF 100/2.8 Macro USM to capture the HEO objects USA 184 (06-027A) and USA 198 (07-060A).

One of the four images capturing the latter, contained an unknown object some 3 degrees south of USA 198. It is a clear trail, similar to that of USA 198 in length and direction. It shows evidence of being the capture of a brief flare. And it doesn't match any known object from the unclassified or classified catalogues.

Below is a detail of the image showing the object (the inset is a 200% blow-up). The trail is about 20 pixels long, or about 3.5'.

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The STSS demo rocket

On November 30, Russel Eberst recovered the "lost" rocket stage 2009-052C from the STSS Demo launch. This allowed Ted to observe it from a preliminary elset in the early hours of Dec 1st, followed by me later that day, and a number of other observers in the days after.

During my observation, thin veil clouds were scattered in the sky, and a bright near-full moon was glowing in the sky. This lead to considerably fogged images. Nevertheless the object showed up on 3 images. It was faint near the zenith and definitely brighter while descending in the east. Below image shows it crossing Andromeda.

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The object should decay somewhere in April/May 2010 (see here). This means we have another nice fastly evolving orbit to keep track on this winter and spring.

This same evening I tried to capture Lacrosse 2 (91-017A) but failed, due to the object having manoeuvred and hence being late.