Satellite Trio

Fantastic image by the way, I would kill to be in the right place at the right time with the know how to get this image.

Pure luck Fintan - I happened to have a camera in my hands at the time, and had been using it on Av with the aperature wide open at the time and a favourable ISO200. I wouldn't have had time to change the settings and wasted a lot of time (seconds) trying to figure out what was going on (was it birds, planes?).

Rarely, they brighten to magnitude +2 to +4, readily visible to the un-aided eye.

These were brighter than mag 2. Think how many objects are in the sky as bright as mag 2 at 7:30pm on a bright sunny evening and you don't see them (easily).

Is there anyone on the boards I could send the Canon RAW CR2 file to who could determine the magnitude of the satellites using the moon (with phase) as a reference?
By all accounts (a quick bit of Googling) I should not have been able to see NOSS satellites in broad daylight, particularly not as bright as they appeared. The most recent (I could find) NOSS launch was 3rd Feb 2005, thing is by that stage the craft were actually smaller (mass-wise anyway, they could be physically larger I suppose).
BTW - I'm not looking for UFOs here (hardly), but it might be an indication that there may be something new from our cousins buzzing over our heads.

Great shot.
Well captured!
First time you see them is impressive.

That's pretty cool. Not something you see often...............if ever (again).

That's pretty cool. Not something you see often...............if ever (again).

No, you can. I have seen them 3 times ever. Apparently, John Flannery (skynotes) posted on these boards waaayyy back a site to find some predicted passes of these. We all saw them at Cosmos '03 I think it was. I'll see if I can find it.

Seanie.

And here it is:

satobs.org/noss.html

Can't find a prediction site for them yet though. I did find that the US Government will not release predictions for them. However, amateurs on the ground do keep track of them and can offer predictions of them. That's what I am looking for right now.


[EDIT] I found this extra bit of information on them:

Go to www.heavens-above.com and click on the "Select" a satellite line.

When the pages gives you the four boxes, type noss 2% in the box for the name of a satellite. This will return a list of the NOSS satellites. The triplets are NOSS 2-1, 2-2 and 2-3.


Seanie.