Hi All, Ron wrote: > Observed #5 [Iridium lunar flare] at 08:26:11 UT on 4 Jan 2001. > Iridium 7 (#24793). The moon had set behind the mountains about 10 > minutes earlier. Ron, you are the MAN! At the rate Iridiums are failing and dropping out of the sky, no one is going to be able to catch up with you unless they're willing to do a lot of driving! > Magnitude perhaps 7.5 which is 0.5 magnitude brighter than predicted. > (of course I usually assigned a magnitude estimate uncertainty of 0.5) For once the satellite pointing error was in your favor for a lunar flare. (Doesn't take much to get you from 8.0 to 7.5). For those of you out there that have the means (telescope or BIG binoculars) and like trying challenging types of satellite observations, you should really give lunar flares a try while the satellites' orientations are still being maintained. Set the source to Moon in IRIDFLAR, change your dimmest flare magnitude to around +10, and search for opportunities each month from 1st quarter to third quarter. If a good one turns up (say mag 9, or brighter if you're using binocs), note the exact date/time and the Iridium satellite producing the glint, and then run SkyMap with that satellite to get the precise star field location. (Remember to turn off the satellite solar lighting constraint since IRIDFLAR only predicts lunar flares for Iridiums that aren't sunlit). Ron can give you more advice as to how you should set up your telescope, but definitely use your lowest power eyepiece. If you have an equatorial mount, you may also want to try the trick of setting the polar alignment to the azimuth 180 degrees away from the satellite's culmination azimuth, and the elevation to 90 degrees minus the satellite's culmination elevation. For example, if the satellite is going to culminate 70 degrees above the east at azimuth 85, you would want to polar align on azimuth 265, elevation 20. This trick allows you to manually track the satellite in one axis (the right ascension axis, which you've transformed into the "along-track" axis.) Cheers, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Jan 04 2001 - 11:33:02 PST