The amazing news (http://www.space.com/news/090211-satellite-collision.html) is that the Iridium-33 satellite was obliterated by a highly improbable collision with long-dead Soviet Cosmos-2251 satellite ~800 km over Siberia.

And one of our old-time AMSATers is also in the news on Space.com. The Feb. 5th edition carried a very interesting article on a long-time AMSAT supporter, Greg Roberts, ZS1BI. For those of you who don't know Greg, an interesting Hearsat "Ask The Expert" autobiographical (& how-to) article can be found at  http://www.hearsat.org/content/ask-expert-greg-roberts.

For many years Greg was a well-known Variable Star Observer affiliated with the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Capetown and has been a very active amateur astronomer (a photo of Greg can be seen here). See here and also here to see Greg's very interesting notes about visual observing of satellites.

Greg's most recent visual satellite observing activities are reported on Space.com at http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090204-tw-satellite-sleuthing.html.

But some background first -- recent news reports tell of  the DoD's secret satellite DSP-F23 wandering out of control in Geostationary orbit (http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=252590162). The Feb.5 issue of Space.com  tells of Greg's optical tracking of DSP-F23  as it flew near the European Astrium-1 constellation.  Click here to see  this spectacular video clip of the F23 "flyby" produced thru Greg's efforts.

73 de Tom, K3IO