Iridium 8 -2 mag flare
3432P@VM1.CC.NPS.NAVY.MIL
Sat, 23 Aug 97 21:41:43 PDT
Yet another Iridium flare, this time of Iridium 8 (24792 97020A), in
a pass uncannily similiar in geometry to the flare of Iridium 5 that I
reported yesterday. Here are the details, with the previous pass listed
first and today's underneath it.
Sat Sat Sat Sun Sun Flare
UT Dir AZ EL AZ EL Duration Mag
04:19:45 08/23 95 94 52 299 -17 8s -4
04:13:45 08/24 95 100 51 298 -16 7s -3
I ran Skymap to plot the two trajectories, and they almost overlay
each other. There's less than 1 deg verticle separation between
the two passes, with the passes exactly parallel to each other.
A few other Iridium passes before and after the passes above produced
either no flares, or very minimal brightening.
Craig Cholar 3432P@VM1.CC.NPS.NAVY.MIL
Marina, California
36 41 10.3N, 121 48 17.9W (36.6862, -121.8050) UTC -7