Despite more or less dense Cirrus clouds I managed to see a bright (going beyond mag -4) flare from the left forward pointing ASCAT antenna of MetOp-A (2006-044A) right in UMa yesterday at 19:59:12 UTC, 17-APR-08. Flares from sun-synchronous satellites like Metop show a distinct seasonal variation. There are no flares during the winter (except for high latitude observers), early spring sees flares from the central ASCAT antenna (which will move toward the tropics for the summer while flares from the left forward ASCAT antenna (the left backward one for Southern Hemisphere observers) are lighting up the summer skies for temperate observers. I also caught a glimpse of Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A) passing Epsilon UMa at 20:34:47 UTC, 17-APR-08. This was 8 seconds later that expected with the TLEs from the latest classfd.tle which I downloaded (epoch 99.82500038). During the half minute or so of my observation (before the clouds won the upper hand again) I did not see any flares or disappearances. Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany 49.8822N, 8.6558E ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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