Last night (about 0:53:30-0:55:30 Dec 30 UTC) I was watching what proved to be a very bright ISS pass, very nearly as bright as Jupiter, when it flared briefly -- about one or two seconds -- to brighter than Venus; then it dropped back to -2.5 or so and then finally gradually faded as it went into the Earth's shadow. I got a time for the flare, but my stopwatch, once again as it has a few other times, recently zeroed itself when I clicked the button to read the times. Drat! I believe the brightest moment was after it had passed due north, but I'm not sure. (This malfunction also lost four or five flashing Iridium clicks and a solitary click for a +4.5 flash of ASC 1 [15994, 85-076C], an almost geosynch drifting very slowly eastward. Time to get a new stopwatch, I guess.... I really wanted that ASC 1 flash time! After I saw that one I watched the location as I counted to 300 but did not see it again. I read Ed Light's report of a very similar ISS pass until after I came in from observing.) Location was outside my apartment, 30.3086N, 97.7279W, 150m. Oh, also got to see a very nice predicted -8 flare from Iridium 81 just four to five minutes before ISS. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Dec 30 2000 - 01:10:41 PST