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

[Robert Nielsen]

I'm not making it up about the space
junk ... here is a thread in Cloudy Nights about someone who saw something similar.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4675612/Main/4645166

Robert

On Sep 22, 2012, at 5:11 PM, Alexey Toptygin <alexeyt at freeshell.org> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Chaos-l mailing list
> Chaos-l at rtpnet.org
> http://rtpnet.org/mailman/listinfo/chaos-l