This evening I surfed the Heavens-above site, and knew that the Iridium 66 would be flared at 20:51:52 local time (UTC 01:51:52) with Mag: -5, Alt 49 degree, Azi 108 deg. I have been failed so many times to catch a passing by satellite, so before I went out, I checked the local time from the Heavens-above's link and made sure that my watch was not deviated that much from the actual time. I started to watch from 20:50 local time or 01:50 UTC. Finally I saw a bright flare, very bright [please excuse me for using this qualitative term. I am still unconfortable with the negative magnitude that is brighter than the positive one :-) ], with an altitude larger than 49 degree as predicted. I did not measured the altitude, but I thought it was somewhere around 70 degree or higher. Was that flare really came from Iridium 66? Since this is my first experience, I did not time the flare. It happened so fast. By the time I yelled my wife to come out to see, it had already gone. :-) By the way, I think the Heaven-above site really do a good job. The sky map and the time for satellite positions really help a newby like me. Aris Tanone Huntsville, AL ( 34.7300°N, 86.5860°W) e-mail: atanone@hiwaay.net http://home.hiwaay.net/~atanone/Sat-track1/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Apr 08 2000 - 19:52:57 PDT