(meteorobs) Closing notes (Javor's trails)

[Marco Langbroek]

Some closing notes with regard to this detective story.

Below is the actual IDSat software output when two positions, one from each of 
Javor's reported two trails (I was confused earlier, thought there were 3 trails 
but it are two as the "third" is in line with one of the other), are compared to 
the two first known orbits for Progress M-54 and its separate motor.

As you can see, the trails fit in track direction ("Trk"), are 2.7 - 3.6 degrees 
off-track ("Sep") perpendicular to the predicted trajectories and with time 
differences ("Tdiff") of 30 - 39 seconds. So quite close. Note that the angular 
velocity ("Vang") is indeed 1.7 seconds as Javor reported.

So I'd say this are Progress M-54 and its separate motor, or otherwise at least 
objects related to the Progress launch. Case closed, my dear Watson.

I enjoyed this little sleuthing....

- Marco  :-)

00000 00 000A   1111 F 20060424190512640 17 75 1116228+037240

Observation: 2006 04 24  19 05 12.640  11 16 22.8  +03.7240  2000

Site 1111 co-ordinates:  46.239 N  14.545 E  10 m


                                 tdiff   Sep   Range  Trk   Vang
      Name       Desig   NORAD     s     deg    km    deg   deg/s
-------------- -------- -----  ------- ----- -----  ----- -----
Progress M-54  06013A   29057   30.02  3.64   255    61    1.69
Progress motor 06013B   29058   31.53  3.42   254    61    1.69

NOTE: tdiff < 0 means observation was earlier than prediction.


00000 00 000A   1111 F 20060424190519920 17 75 1114132+042560

Observation: 2006 04 24  19 05 19.920  11 14 13.2  +04.2560  2000

Site 1111 co-ordinates:  46.239 N  14.545 E  10 m

                                 tdiff   Sep   Range  Trk   Vang
      Name       Desig   NORAD     s     deg    km    deg   deg/s
-------------- -------- -----  ------- ----- -----  ----- -----
Progress M-54  06013A   29057    37.48  2.95  255     61   1.68
Progress motor 06013B   29058    38.99  2.72  254     61   1.69

NOTE: tdiff < 0 means observation was earlier than prediction.


-----
Dr Marco Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)

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