[FPSPACE] Astra 1M joins the fleet...........DSP-23 on the roll ?

[John Locker]

This evening after  storms yesterday and cloud today we had a short clear 
spell mid evening.

Conditions were good.

Grabbing the opportunity I managed to image the latest addition to the Astra 
fleet .. 1M which moved into position just a few hours ago.

See    http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrtlbs.gif       there are now six birds in 
position , rather than five.

As the sky was so clear I then moved half a degree to the west to look for 
any sign of DSP .

Although I initially thought I had acquired it , in a simailar plane to the 
Astras , having seen a very bright satellite moving "south" , the target 
suddenly disappeared , so I continued a spiral search.
About fifteen minutes later , I ended up more or less back where I started 
and again saw a short lived , bright geosat moving quite
quickly ( south ), about three degrees inclined.

This time I locked off the position and started the camera running .
The result is interesting.
The satellite is definitely DSP 23.
Rather than the steady mag 12 or so observed on the 13th the bird has now 
backed off to mag 13 , almost invisible , but , flashing every fifteen 
minutes.

This is something I have not come across before and assume it is either 
slowly rotating , or tumbling.

I would appreciate any comments please.

A low quality video can be found at the foot of the "Recent Obs " page on my 
website at
http://satcom.website.orange.co.uk/

The original animation is 10mb and in gif format , but is available on 
request.

Field of view is 30 arc minutes , exposures 30secs duration per frame.

John







http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrtlbs.gif

http://satcom.website.orange.co.uk/