Greetings everyone, during a 77 deg. elevation pre-dawn Jan09 pass I saw a bright glint/flare from ISS as I tracked it through my newtonian scope. Not expecting such an event, I didn't get an exact time of maxiumum magnitude, but glanced at my watch shortly after the flare began to recede in brightness and and noted the local time was 06:40:44. My magnitude estimate would have have it approaching Venus in brightness, but that is a rough guess; It far outshown Vega which was only about 7 degrees away from the glint. I later estimated that the glint reached maximum brightness at Azimuth 56.2, Elev 32.4 at 14:40:42 UT, with the help of Skymap to plot the path. On a less technical note, the view of the ISS through the scope was simply amazing. The coppery-orange color of the panels and their elongated shape were a treat to watch. I was fortunate to see this pass because a large cloud front was moving in from the west and had already obliterated the western sky. Fortunately the eastern half was still clear so I saw the pass unhindered. Craig Cholar 3432P@VM1.CC.NPS.NAVY.MIL Marina, California 36 41 10.3N, 121 48 17.9W (36.6862, -121.8050) UTC -8 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Tue Jan 09 2001 - 07:40:21 PST