2004 XP14 sightings?

tmnathe wrote:
It was very faint and an irratic tumbler by my estimate. Only visable
for about a second every 5 - 10 minutes or so (not an accurate time by
any means). At its brightest, maybe mag 11, but invisable the rest of
the time. My hunch is that there is a flat spot that was acting as a
reflector.

Interesting--that was my experience. I had just two moments when I
thought I might have seen it, and it seemed to flash into visibility for
a brief moment, and when I tried to confirm, I couldn't see it. But of
course that doesn't prove that I saw it; for all I know, it could have
been a random piece of junk in my eye.

I did see a north-to-south satellite cross the field while I was hunting
for XP14.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

Wow Brian, we must of saw a simular satellite! We counted at least
three polar satellites pass through the field of view during the night.
Got very confusing at one point for me when I had a solid lock on XP14
and zip goes a satellite throwing my eye off and loosing the asteroid.

I'm starting to see reports from our other club members who tracked
XP14 with larger equipment and from fixed sites. They were able to
track the asteroid for extended periods.

Tom


Brian Tung wrote:
tmnathe wrote:
It was very faint and an irratic tumbler by my estimate. Only visable
for about a second every 5 - 10 minutes or so (not an accurate time by
any means). At its brightest, maybe mag 11, but invisable the rest of
the time. My hunch is that there is a flat spot that was acting as a
reflector.

Interesting--that was my experience. I had just two moments when I
thought I might have seen it, and it seemed to flash into visibility for
a brief moment, and when I tried to confirm, I couldn't see it. But of
course that doesn't prove that I saw it; for all I know, it could have
been a random piece of junk in my eye.

I did see a north-to-south satellite cross the field while I was hunting
for XP14.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

wrote in message
oups.com...
Wow Brian, we must of saw a simular satellite! We counted at least
three polar satellites pass through the field of view during the night.
Got very confusing at one point for me when I had a solid lock on XP14
and zip goes a satellite throwing my eye off and loosing the asteroid.

I'm starting to see reports from our other club members who tracked
XP14 with larger equipment and from fixed sites. They were able to
track the asteroid for extended periods.

Tom


Did anyone get any photos?

George

We had a camera with us that might of worked, but the breeze was just
bad enough to wiggle the LX200, so we didn't try. This was also a shake
down session for doing some occultation work this summer. So we were
more interested in getting equipment working and figuring out bugs and
kinks then data recording.

We're getting set up with a KIWI-OSD system, so that takes a little
getting used to.

TN


George wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
Wow Brian, we must of saw a simular satellite! We counted at least
three polar satellites pass through the field of view during the night.
Got very confusing at one point for me when I had a solid lock on XP14
and zip goes a satellite throwing my eye off and loosing the asteroid.

I'm starting to see reports from our other club members who tracked
XP14 with larger equipment and from fixed sites. They were able to
track the asteroid for extended periods.

Tom


Did anyone get any photos?

George

Hi Brian -

The group that I was part Monday did a little bit of data comparision
and found out that we were about 1.1 degrees off of XP14. So we were
deluding ourselves into thinking that we saw it.

Problem is, we're not sure why the data sets we used are so far off. I
did find my laptop was some 22 seconds slow, but that only accounts for
a little bit of the error. Rechecked everything and the latitude and
langitude along with the elevation were entered correctly. So we're
stumbed at this point.

Tom


Brian Tung wrote:
tmnathe wrote:
It was very faint and an irratic tumbler by my estimate. Only visable
for about a second every 5 - 10 minutes or so (not an accurate time by
any means). At its brightest, maybe mag 11, but invisable the rest of
the time. My hunch is that there is a flat spot that was acting as a
reflector.

Interesting--that was my experience. I had just two moments when I
thought I might have seen it, and it seemed to flash into visibility for
a brief moment, and when I tried to confirm, I couldn't see it. But of
course that doesn't prove that I saw it; for all I know, it could have
been a random piece of junk in my eye.

I did see a north-to-south satellite cross the field while I was hunting
for XP14.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html