hi; Iridium 31 double flare

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Hi! This is my first post to SeeSat-L. I live in Pasadena CA in the USA,
about 34 deg N, 118 deg W. I checked my position to more decimal places
using EtakGuide at http://www.etakguide.com/. Fairly light-polluted but
occasionally get out to dark sky sites.

I've been enjoying passes of Mir and UARS for a while (saw Hubble once),
and more recently looking at Iridium flares, using eye and 7x35
binoculars. Photographed 1 Mir pass using a nice non-SLR camera. I also
have a Celestron FirstScope 80 WA but haven't yet used it for
satellites.

Tonight I enjoyed a flare of Iridium 31 as predicted, UTC Jan. 2 98
02:07:30 using elements from
http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk:80/satevo/tle/iridiums.tle and
iridflar.exe. Close to predicted brightness of -2.6 & elevation 55 deg.

I am posting to say hello ... and also to report a second slightly
brighter flare when the satellite had moved down to elevation 30 deg.
Just a suggestion to the program authors: a program predicting the
brightest flare in a pass should in fact have predicted the second one
not the first! Do any assumptions need to be modified for predicting
Iridium 31 flares?

Best wishes and a happy 1998 to you all.
-- 
Dr. Mark Hanning-Lee, markhl@prodigy.net

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