I usually deny there is a pattern to Iridium flashes, though a single satellite appears at the same time after three days, the orbit has precessed to the west, and the Sun's azimuth and altitude have changed. But, depending on latitude, longitude, season, and current position of orbit planes, sequences do appear. I am now in the middle of one such unbroken sequence, reaching -5. magnitude on Feb.05, -8 from Feb.12 to 26 (!), then down to -5 on Feb.28. The flare path moves from 6.8 km W to 2.8 E, then back to 6.9 km W. I have certainly not seen such a stable pattern before! Unfortunately this is early morning at my work location, and I travel for 75 min to get here. This is of course very longitude dependent - the next satellite in the plane arrives 9 min. later, ie. 2.24 deg (here 125 km) further W. -- bjorn.gimle@tietotech.se (office) -- -- b_gimle@algonet.se (home) http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle -- -- COSPAR 5919, MALMA, 59.2576 N, 18.6172 E, 23 m -- -- COSPAR 5918, HAMMARBY, 59.2985 N, 18.1045 E, 44 m -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Thu Feb 15 2001 - 04:26:31 PST