The night is beautiful, and earlier Mike McCants got TiPS (23937, 96-029F) in his telescope on a pretty good pass, and it was the best look I've seen of that object in many months if not a year or two! It was a very good phase angle and might have been bright enough to see in my 10x50 binocs (on this clear, moonless night), but I appreciated Mike letting me get a good look at it in the scope. One interesting thing was that while Mike looked through his 12x80 finder scope he said that it was growing fainter; through the 8-inch scope I could see that it was getting shorter! As it moved on to the east its angle changed so that its apparent length diminished in a noticeable way in just a minute or so. I had an Iridflar prediction for a +1 *penumbral* flare from Iridium 11 (the *new* #11, 25577/98-074A, I'm sure), but I did not see anything. However, it was a one-power obs., and also there was a chance that it was too near the big radio tower on the site, especially if it was significantly fainter than predicted. The radio tower is not a big problem, but it can get in the way at times. The elements for the prediction were only a couple of days old. Site: 30.314N, 97.866W, 280m. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sun Jan 21 2001 - 23:16:55 PST