Nick,

Did you use a Lunar Trailblazer ephemeris from JPL Horizons to find it?  

How accurate was it?

Grant

Last night this object was 6 arcmin east of the Trailblazer ephemeris from Horizons. We are pretty sure that this is the upper stage since it is quite bright (mag 16). I would expect the spacecraft to be much fainter (18-19?) since they are small. 

Tonight its out at about 200,000 miles. Peregrine was fairly easy at 190,000 and Artemis well out beyond the Moon. Might be the dim end of 17 if we're lucky. 

Will try it once I do yet-another T-Point run. TSX just suddenly stopped running last night during a slew. I kicked it off again, reconnected to the sidereally tracking telescope and it still got its position wrong my multiple degrees, So I thought I would start from scratch tonight and avoid a possible scope-bashing-into-mount type scenario if it really gets confused.

Will have a bash at it with Tycho Tracker and see if that pulls it out the noise. Certainly not looking as clear tonight as last night - when Mercury was the brightest and clearest I have ever seen it.

Conditions grotty here tonight (March 1) with a lot of cirrus after a nice day. Upper stage is 16.7 and exactly where it should be. No sign of the spacecraft yet.

Grant - If you've had a go tonight the upper stage is varying between 16.5 and 16.8. I found a second object, much closer to the Horizons LTB position but it is only present in 6 consecutive 30s frames so this must have been a glint. Conditions pretty poor again tonight with a lot of cirrus. This stack is 6x30. The object I've labelled 2025-038X is the upper stage, 2025-038Y may be trailblazer.  It has had some problems.

Hi there,

I was indeed out but I only saw one object convincingly. What was the separation and direction between the LTB location and the other two?

Certainly got one of them easily, but anything else there was mostly too faint for a 300mm at 25 degs alt with thin cirrus and 60s exposures. 

This run of clear nights is letting a lot of data accumulate on the drive.

EDIT: Could only see one object tonight, though I was trying to image through the smoke from a neighbours bonfire...