Thank you very much to Gerald Holtkamp, who wrote:
"some geostationary satellites will experience a solar eclipse
on 28-FEB-06.
<...>
"Observers in America (North and South) can see some GEOs
around 102 West experiencing an annular solar eclipse
DIRECTV 8 (2005-019A ; #28659; 100.7W) at 5:01 UT
DIRECTV 1-R (1999-056; #25937; 100.8W) at 5:01 UT
GE4 (1999-060A; #259549; 101.0W) at 5:02 UT
DIRECTV 4S (2001-052A ; #26985; 101.1W) at 5:02 UT
SPACEWAY 1 (2005-015A ; #28644; 102.8W) at 5:07 UT
GE-1 (1996-054A; #24315; 103.0W) at 5:08 UT
"Expect a drop in magnitude of about 2.5. The overall partial
phase will last half an hour."
Feb. 28 falls within "flaring geosat season" for quite a bit of
the northern hemisphere, so some of the objects above, which
are in a tightly packed group, may be brighter than normal part
of the time. (These are near our meridian, so their actual
flaring time is around local true midnight, which is roughly 90
minutes later than the solar eclipse. But I tend to think it
would be an interesting night to try to observe them, right
around the times above.)
Now if only we can shake the recent cloudy weather....
Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA
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