Strange object while waiting for ISS

[Morepower (Craig)]

Hi all,
On Friday evening on the 3-7-09 a mate and I were out waiting for the ISS(space station) to make a pass at 18:25 in Kings Park, Sydney West. My friend pointed straight up at about 90˚ to an object that was barely visible to the naked eye that, at a guess, would have been travelling at a similar altitude and speed as the space station. To be honest I don’t know how he spotted it, it was so dim. It was only barely visible due to it's very low reflectivity, not because it was too small. It seemed just a tad smaller in size than the ISS and was brown to very dark orange (possibly from being in the sunlight ?) in colour. I'm wondering if it was either the Shuttle or an asteroid ? The actual ISS came into view just 10-15 seconds later travelling from WSW going NNE. The object in question was travelling on a similar trajectory only maybe 8-10˚ more North as if they would meet up, or cross paths at some point out of veiw. I look up at the skies all the time and know most of the Planets, etc., but I havn’t ever seen anything like this. If it had been even a little reflective it would have been easily visible. Of course I didn’t take my binoculars down with me this time around . Any thoughts on what it might have been will be much appreciated. My friend wants to believe it was Aliens, lol.

Many thanks
Craig

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

If you don't use it then you will need to configure it. www.calsky.com can allow you to backward search based on the location you were at.

Even though i was in Perth, I did a backward search for that day to include other satelitte and found heaps going overhead.

My back yard is heavily light polluted so i can see the dim satelittes very well but if your location is not so bad then you may have seen one of 15 satelittes I saw in my search. For the info below it is my time frame by the way.


http://www.calsky.com/icons/esync.gif17h56m08shttp://www.calsky.com/icons/icon-sat1.png ShiJian 6C LMr
(29507 2006-046-C)
→Ground track →Star charthttp://www.calsky.com/icons/asv/asv005000.pngAppears 17h50m01s 5.2mag az:158.3° SSE horizon
Culmination 17h56m08s 2.7mag az: 81.6° E h:36.2°
distance: 934.6km height above Earth: 592.7km elevation of sun: -7°
Disappears 18h02m16s 6.1mag az: 5.3° N horizon

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Sorry about the last post wouldn't copy or paste the way I wanted it.

[Blue Skies (Jacquie)]

Add this site to your regular reading: Spaceweather.com It posted a few days ago that it was a Progress supply module. Mystery solved.

[cookie8 (Vincent)]

Hi Craig
I asked the same question after imaged the same "mysterious" object
Just take a look at my photo posted in the Solar System section 2/7/09
in this forum.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=46851
At least 2 possible candidates.
Cheers

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Spaceweather answered it clearly, shame it's US only. Nice site otherwise.

[Morepower (Craig)]

That's awesome ! Thanks to everyone for the response. My friend reckoned we would never find out what it was, I told him he needed to have faith in the power of Forums.

Hi Vincent,
Sorry I didn’t look in the Solar System section, I was looking mainly in Observation Reports. Looking at your pics I would say that is exactly what we say, both in the way of elapsed time between them and difference in brightness. However from memory the ISS was to the left, not the right, of it and I didn't think the trajectory was as parallel as that. But I guess it is hard to remember exactly when you only see one object at a time. Though you said you posted/took those pics on the 2-7-09 ?

According to spaceweather.com we might be able to see it again. On NASA’s Human Space Flight Site in Sydney the ISS will be visible on July 12th @ 06:09 to 06:14 which is the date they say it will be docking. They don’t say what time it will be docking though, but should still be worth getting up for a look at least.

EDIT: Looking at the pics again they are the right way around, I was looking at them from the wrong point.

Regards
Craig