Last evening, here in southcentral Pennsylvania, I photographed the ISS/Endeavour pass at 18:22 local time. Since it was reasonably clear but very cold and I was using my Nikon wide angle lens for the first time, I took another five photographs of the night sky before leaving my site. At 18:35 I pointed my camera towards Cassiopeia and made a 105 second exposure. After the image loaded to the camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5700, I noticed I had captured a satellite flare. I had checked Heavens-Above yesterday and double checked it today, and no Iridium flares were forecast at that time for my location. The flare is probably -2 magnitude within five degrees southeast of Epsilon Cassiopeiae. I loaded current TLEs from Starry Night's website last night into The Sky today and the only satellite close to Epsilon Cassiopeiae at the time was Intercosmos 25. But The Sky shows it about ten degrees away. Is it probable that Intercosmos 25 produced the flare I captured last evening? Dave Kerr Carlisle, PA 40 13.750 N -77 16.667 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 02 2002 - 19:37:14 EST