Hi Michael, Welcome to the list. Regarding your attempt of a daytime Iridium flare -- Ron Lee's comments are on the mark. Daytime flares are by no means easy the first time around. The problems are multifold, but chief among them is the lack of references objects -- both from a pointing and a focusing standpoint. (When you have nothing but deep blue sky to look at, your eyes don't tend to focus at infinity). Daytime flares are only visible for at most 3 seconds, and often a second or less. You can quite literally blink and miss them. That's why timing is absolutely essential. You shouldn't look up until about 10 seconds before the flare time -- and when you do, keep your eyes moving around in the vicinity of where you expect the flare will occur. Be counting backwards from 10 in your head so that you know when NOT to blink. If you do all this, your odds should improve to about 50%. (Keep in mind that only a 0.1 degree pointing error on the satellite can drop a -8 flare down below -4, making it invisible, so there is some random luck involved). Best, 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 : Fri Jul 28 2000 - 13:20:51 PDT