I just got the following message (actually I did some editing) from Dana Hrubes who is stationed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, latitude -90 degrees. At the end of this post I reference some awesome time lapse sequences showing stars, aurora and iridium flares taken down there by a cohort of Dana. In this e-mail I have also included some other things he said that I think are of special interest being where he is, at the south pole. Here's Dana's edited e-mail.. I have my web page up for July and I have a link to Glenn Kinoshita's site. Glenn is wintering here also. He has some fantastic time lapse videos of aurora during the mid-July iridium flares. In these videos you can see auroras over the Atmospheric Research Observatory (note the green laser) with a series of Iridium satellite flares repeating every nine minutes near the constellation Grus. Glenn used a Nikon digital camera (model as yet unknown by Dana) that was set for 50 sec exposures on each frame and the frames were shot continuously. I think he used ISO 200. To make this possible we used a heated box that you can put a camera in and leave for days at a time. I told him to make sure he sets it up Aug 27 -28 for the 48 hour -8 magnitude iridium marathon. By the way, it is -106 degrees F (-76.5 C) right now and it is dropping like a rock and we are also at a physiological altitude of 11,430 feet and the pressure is still dropping We reached -110.7 F at 1650 UTC, August 1. I was hoping for another 6.4 degrees lower, so we would break the all time record and also we'd be at the point where carbon dioxide freezes at the altitude. We were at about 11,500 ft equivalent last night. To see the best of Glenn's videos go to http://dhrubes.home.att.net/july-05.html and look at "aurora and iridium flare movie #1", "aurora and iridium flare movie #2", and "aurora and iridium flare movie #3" . Dana ++++++++ I believe that Dana is using information about when to expect flare "seasons" by what was predicted by Gerhard Holtkamp. That is probably how Dana knows of the upcoming Aug 27 -28 for the 48 hour -8 magnitude iridium marathon. So I think is is safe to say, thanks Gerhard! Clear skies, Tom Iowa USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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