Chuck Hards wrote:
I stepped outside this morning to look at the sky, and noticed a pair of satellites in formation. They were identical in brightness, about 4th magnitude, traveling northwest to southeast and passing high overhead. I followed them from Ursa Major through the tail of Leo, the rearmost passing just a few arc-minutes from Denebola. They were a couple of degrees apart (crude estimation, I'm at work and away from my atlases) and stayed in formation rigidly. Without going to a lot of trouble, can someone who follows such things ID this pair, or at least classify them? This is the first formation I've seen from light-polluted SL valley location. TIA.
I saw my particular constellation this morning within a few minutes of 6 am MST.
Looks like you spotted NOSS 3-3. Information on it and the other members of the latest generation NOSS (Naval Ocean Surveillance System) can be found here http://www.satellite.eu.org/noss.html#NOSS3 with an overview of the entire NOSS program here http://www.satellite.eu.org/noss.html . I've seen the triples a number of times but they've always been so faint I've had to use binoculars. It's rather rare that they are as bright as you saw. I'm jealous. It looks like there's going to be another high pass tomorrow (Friday) morning. But I'm sure that since I plan on watching, they will have cloaked by then... It's to come out of Earth's shadow while in the bucket of the Big Dipped, pass down near Arcturus and set over by Jupiter. Since it'll be a morning pass it will probably start out as "bright" as it's going to get and then fade from there. Details: 06 Jan High Direction 05:11:38 65 N 05:12:36 79 NE 05:19:22 10 SE Patrick -- Patrick Wiggins NASA Solar System Ambassador to Utah http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/ paw@trilobyte.net 435.882.1209