A Naked Eye Geo Sat?

hi Martin,

backtracking on Heavens Above I found a couple of candidates. It may have been either Cosmos 1515 or Cosmos 1842. Have a look at this link and click on the time (17:06 or 17:09) which will bring up a chart of the track showing both satellites passing through the area Conor and yourself noted the "star".

www.heavens-above.com/allsats.asp?lat=54...08333333&Mag=4.5

unfortunately, these Cosmos satellites have near-circular orbits (approx 600km altitude) so that stymies my original suggestion of them being something in a long looping elliptical orbit. Outside of the timeframe quoted the best candidate would have been the Aureole 1 rocket which is in an elliptical orbit.

then again, it could have been a geo-stationary object. The infamous Perseus Flasher of the 1980s led to a major sleuthing effort on the part of amateur astronomers. Paul Maley, and others, eventually nailed it down to sunlight glinting off the solar panels on a geostationary satellite.

a final possibility is fuel venting from an expended rocket stage. People have seen these from Ireland purely by chance though in binoculars or a scope you would see this as a fan-shaped cloud of vapour illuminated by sunlight.

sigh, I guess I've only added to the mystery

John

Thats great stuff John. You have out done yourself with that research!

Funnily enough we may have also seen one of these fuzzy outgassings last year with the naked eye but so far no one has been able to ID that object either.It looked exactly like a mag 3.5 naked eye comet that was visible for approx 25 mins..it was stunning. I can email you the report privately if you wish. I had been getting help from David Moore, David Levy, Johnathin Shanklin, Dan Green and others but i am still at a loss to its nature.

I have never discussed it on any forum before.

Lets hope something big happens in the sky for Christmas!

All best John

Thats great stuff John. You have out done yourself with that research!

Funnily enough we may have also seen one of these fuzzy outgassings last year with the naked eye but so far no one has been able to ID that object either.It looked exactly like a mag 3.5 naked eye comet that was visible for approx 25 mins..it was stunning. I can email you the report privately if you wish. I had been getting help from David Moore, David Levy, Johnathin Shanklin, Dan Green and others but i am still at a loss to its nature.

I have never discussed it on any forum before.

Lets hope something big happens in the sky for Christmas!

All best John

martin,
there was one of those outgassings seen at Whirlpool star party the year before hale bopp, and alot of people saw that one. it was exactly as you said and we had the same problem then.
stephen.

Thanks for that Stephen.

By any chance are there any details on the object? mag, dia position etc etc. If you dont want to put it up then email me as i would really love to know more.

Was there an offical explanation given?

Cheers

Now this is exciting for me to hear this:

We did mention it to other astronomers, and they tended to agree that it might be an GRB.

I saw something like this last year and the year before, it has always stuck in my mind since, I could never explain it!, I should have kept notes, but over the last 2 years, I saw a naked eye new 'star' in the constellation Orion, in ther same position both years just ovet the satr Rigel, Orion'e 2nd brightest star, each 'apparition' lasted roughly 30mins, where this new object would sit there in the same position, and be visible at about 2nd magnitude, but fade very slowly to below 6th.

Now, a GRB is possible, BUT - that would absolutely 100% be detected by the SWIFT GRB detection satellite, so maybe it was'nt that, typical afterglows from a GRB detected by this satellite would be visual magnitudes 11-20! So this would be incredible!

Very Interesting inded!
Keith..

Thanks for sharing that keith. What else could these sudden stars be? beacons from ET? Some kind of variable star? or is there man made objects up there than can explain them. So keith and Eamonn have also seen these. I wish i knew more...what are they?

30 mins Keith....WOW! that must have got you very excited?