[Chaos-l] [Medoc-mountain-men] last night

[Alexey Toptygin]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012, Robert Nielsen wrote:

> Allen,
>
> I can definitely back you up on the central star in the Ring Nebula last 
> night.  It is the first time I have ever seen it ... in my life. 
> Thanks for giving me the opportunity with that nice new mirror you have. 
> I think it was a combination of that and the 
> better-than-the-CSC-predicted seeing last night that made it possible. 
> I was continually using my 13mm eyepiece in my scope, which is more 
> magnification than I usually use at Medoc.

I saw it too, but only for about a second at a time. The image seemed to 
clarify and the star was there, then it would be gone again.

> Like the "special" object Alexey and Michael found ... I'll let them 
> explain ...

Around midnight, Michael was helping me out by looking for M73 in his 
(much larger) scope, since I wasn't able to find it in mine. He said he 
saw something flash; I'd been looking through his telrad at the same time 
and I hadn't seen anything. He saw it again a few more times and then let 
me take a look: it was flashing about every 10 seconds and moving very 
slowly. When we first saw it it was between Albali and nu-Aquariae (near 
the Saturn nebula) and over the next 45 minutes or so it moved past nu 
towards Deneb Algedi at roughly 3-4 degrees per hour. I watched it in my 
binoculars until I left around 12:50.

I think it was Robert that pointed out that it was most likely space 
debris rotating once per 10 seconds. Considering how slowly it was moving, 
it must be in a very high orbit, or at least near the apogee of a higly 
elliptical one.

 			Alexey