Last year Bram Dorreman (51 north) was observing flaring geosats about ten days from now: http://satobs.org/seesat/Mar-2003/0111.html Time to plan ahead -- and hope for clear weather! Ron Welch pointed out to me that this time the Moon will hamper observing them from around 35 north and south latitudes. Richard Clark sent a message with the formula for calculating the peak dates for a given latitude, but there is a fair amount of leeway, as the satellites aren't kept in extremely strict orientations. We've seen them here up to at least ten days before or after the predicted peak date: http://satobs.org/seesat/Mar-2001/0030.html For new folks, flaring geosats (flaring geosynchs, not flashing but flaring) can be seen with 10x50 binoculars near the equinoxes. I hope to see about as many with my nice new 8x42. A very few can be seen without binoculars! Here's Björn Gimle's page about this phenomenon: http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle/geoflare.htm Europeans have the good fortune to be able to see the Astra and Hotbird clusters: http://www.eurastro.de/observ/mr/GEOSTAT.HTM The great photo George Roberts reported the other day was the Astra cluster; it's worthy of repeating! http://aida.astronomie.info/sposetti/index.php/fireworks.jpg.php On March 13, 2002, we did a marathon session observing them. Mike McCants would find one or two or three in one FOV, then move on a little farther west along the Clarke belt. He counted about 60 objects (a handful not operational payloads) by the time we quit about 2:00 AM local time. Many of the flaring ones were visible in my 10x50 binoculars. Around 101 degrees west longitude, there are five that can been seen in one FOV (if it's large enough and they're all bright enough), and they should be visible from most of North America. The following page has links to images of a wide section of the Clarke belt taken from Arizona using a very long exposure, not when they were flaring: http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr01/0106images.html Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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