(meteorobs) Satellite trio

[Marco Langbroek]

Hello Bill,

This was a so caled NOSS triangle. Not so much an experiment - they are operational intelligence gathering satellites, indeed of the US Navy. Probably they operate by an inferometry technique, and that's why the travel in such a tight triangle formation. NOSS stands for Naval Ocean Surveillance System, and you can read a bit more at http://www.satellite.eu.org/noss.html. The newest generation of these NOSS consist of only two, not three satellites.

I think most active meteor observers will have had an encounter wit these triangles. I've seen them several times over the years.

If you have a geographic longitude and latitude of your location for me, and a date and time, I can probably find out for you which NOSS trio this was.

- Marco

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Marco Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)
Leiden, the Netherlands
52.15896 N, 4.48884 E (WGS 84)

e-mail: meteorites at dmsweb.org
DMS website: http://www.dmsweb.org
priv. website: http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek
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