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(meteorobs) Satellite reentry?
This fireball report comes from Shannon Rudine, who, as far as I know, is
not a member of the meteorobs list. Does anyone know what she might have
observed?
Thanks! Tony
>Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 22:46:07 -0600
>From: Shannon Rudine <rudine@astro.as.utexasdot edu>
>Reply-To: rudine@astro.as.utexasdot edu
>Organization: McDonald Observatory Visitors' Center
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
>X-Accept-Language: en
>To: webmaster@spaceweather.com, Shannon Rudine <rudine@astro.as.utexasdot edu>
>Subject: Satellite reentry observed?
>
>To whom it may concern:
>At 0418 UT December 2, 2001 (UT) I observed what was likely a satellite
>or rocket booster reentering the atmosphere from McDonald Observatory
>(Lat=30d40.5min, Long 104d01min), near Fort Davis, TX. I observed about
>40 degrees worth of the reentry of an object that had already broken up
>into several dozen slow moving incandescent fragments, most of which
>were reddish-orange shedding fainter trains of material, however,
>several fragments were brilliant white, each being nearly as bright as
>Jupiter (visible below). The fragmentation train was tracked until the
>brightest fragments dropped below the NNE horizon. The entire event
>(from first notice) lasted about 20-25 seconds.
>
>A rough estimate of the first encounter azimuth was 84 degrees with an
>altitude of approximately 35-40 degrees. The event ended with the object
>dropping below the horizon (~30 azimuth) with a local horizon of about
>4-6 degrees altitude. Incandescent fragments were spread laterally in
>the sky about 5 degrees wide and from leading to trailing edge of the
>debris field had an approximate length of 12 degrees.
>--
>Mr. Shannon Rudine
>Public Affairs Specialist
>McDonald Observatory
>Visitors' Information Center
>O:915/426-3640
>O: 915/426-4102
>http://vc.as.utexasdot edu
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