I turned my scope to Jupiter using a 20mm EP i saw what i asume was a satellite heading north bound, not visable to the naked eye so i watched it in the scope until it was gone (about 10 seconds). I don't have any programs to tell me what is up there with pass times and i am curious to know as this was moving very fast. The time was between 7.08pm and 7.10pm this evening (Monday) and it passed just under Jupiter when i saw it. Any ideas.??
John Mangos was talking live to a NASA representative on SkyNews tonight at about 7:10pm and he said that either ISS or the Shuttle (I missed which one he said) was passing over OZ at that time. Might have been it. But could've just been a sattelite too. I see about 8 sattelites go by every night.
I see most of the sattelites in the same 2 positions. They never change whilst the sky does. One path is North to South very high in the Eastern sky almost at Zenith and the other is West to East high in the Southern sky. I see these regularly every night. The other odd sattelites I see are on no particular nightly pattern.
I see 1 sattelite go by North to South very high in the Western sky each night I am viewing. I only ever see it do 1 lap though. All the others are repeat offenders all night long till well after midnight, which is strange coz the sun shouldn't even be hitting them then.
p.s. I just remembered an interesting sight. On one night I saw a sattelite going the opposite direction from the one in the normal North to South path and it looked like they would hit each other from my viewing spot. Probabaly miles apart from each other!
Last edited by ballaratdragons; 08-08-2005 at 10:37 PM.
My low light Mintron video camera has shown over 40 satellites every evening within 2 hours of sunset in just one part of the sky. Same goes just before sunrise so that's easily 80 per night. The fainter you can go the more you see!
They are fascinating to watch on video rolling and tumbling as they move across the sky.
The object could have been anything, there is so much rubbish up there now that you are bound to see something during a nights observing. I have also noticed that the clouds mostly stay clear of Orion too, it could be 8/8 of cloud cover but a tiny section is clear right around Orion, strange.......... I have only seen about 5 satellites while observing the Great Neb though the eyepiece. The ones I really hate are while you are observing some very faint galaxy and using adverted vision that BANG!!!!!!!!! a bright satellite goes through the field and scares the living do-dad's out of you.....
L.
