Saturday 12 August 2006

Slow Lacrosse 5 flare (belated post)

Due to circumstances, a quite belated report.

I observed a beautifull pass of Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A, #28646) one week ago, August 6-7. It was very bright, and showed a slow magnitude zero flare at (Aug 06) 23:15:25 ± 10s UTC.

For the part of the pass that I could observe (roughly from 30 deg altitude NW, where I first picked it up, to 40 deg altitude NE where it moved behind the building) it did not do its 'disappearance trick' this time.

I obtained 3 trail photographs during the pass. The positions indicate Lacrosse 5 was approoxmately 0.4 seconds late

A photograph of the very bright trail fading gradually some seconds after the brightness peak (photograph 2 in the series) can be seen here:



(Click on image for larger version)

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