Brad Young wrote: "Saw PAS 1R (26608) last night from 2:58:52 - 3:05:13 UT, ramping up evenly from ~+7 mag to +5 and back to inv in my 10x50 binoculars. ... Not sure how to report such a sight...PPAS format?" I'm not sure that there's any settled report format on this phenomenon. It can occur with many operational geosats. A few of them get bright enough to be seen without binoculars! It occurs around the equinoxes. "First long term flaring geosat I'd seen and it was quite a different event than the "flashers" like Telstar 401.... Is there posted in the archives or on Web a short discourse on why this geosat "flares" and the others "flash"?" The ones that flash are tumbling. Flaring is due to changing Sun-object-observer geometry. Björn has replied already about this, but I'll add the following: Rainer Kresken's original post about the phenomenon -- http://satobs.org/seesat/Sep-1999/0002.html Björn's web page about it -- http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle/geoflare.htm A reminder about it that I sent a couple of years ago, with links to other information -- http://satobs.org/seesat/Feb-2004/0069.html Stardial page that includes links to small mpg movies of flaring geosats entering and exiting Earth's shadow -- http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/stardial/satellites.html It's somewhat early for the "flaring geosat season" to begin, but if an operational object is in a somewhat inclined orbit (e.g., Milstar 6, as Kevin reported it a few days ago) or is in a somewhat different-than-usual orientation (maybe PAS 1R?), then the flaring may occur outside the usually expected window for the phenomenon. Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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