(meteorobs) Bright mystery satellite pair spotted during PER observations tonight

[daniela daniela]

Did you look up the orbital elements of the two satellites that were
brought to orbit by the Proton M a few days ago? They may not be on HA
because they did not reach intended orbit and so launch was written
off as "failure".

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 1:46 AM,  <dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> Hi Marco,
>
> while visually observing the Perseids in the night 11/12 August 2012 from
> Witten, Germany, latitude 51.4°N, longitude 7.3°E, at 22:35 UTC I noticed
> a pair of very bright satellites climbing higher from the SW along the
> 'neck' of Aquila: they were of equal brightness, at first exceeding
> Altair's, but fading simultaneously while leaving Aquila and moving
> towards Cygnus in the zenith where they were lost to the naked eye; the
> limiting magnitude was about 5.2 mag there. The angular distance between
> the two objects remained constant and was roughly the same as between
> Alpha and Gamma Aquilae, i.e. 2 to 3 degrees. NEITHER Heavens Above NOR
> Calsky list ANY satellite, let alone two satellites, even remotely fitting
> these observations!
>
> Any idea what that may have been?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Daniel
>
> _______________________________________________
> meteorobs mailing list
> meteorobs at meteorobs.org
> http://lists.meteorobs.org/mailman/listinfo/meteorobs