Hi, Steve, Thanks for your response. > I have a picture of these 2 Iridiums flaring on 5/4/05 at 10.12 PM > local time EDT. It was my first picture of an Iridium flare. ... > It can be seen at http://www.geocities.com/satman888/Nightsky.html Very nice! I keep telling Marylanders that Ohio is just a suburb of Maryland; and our simultaneous observations of these events prove it. My ancient version of IRIDFLAR shows the glints much brighter at Newcomb, MD, than at Nissen, OH. Your image shows a glint from Iridium P3 B below right of a brighter glint from Iridium P35. Ir P3 B was about 5s ahead of Ir P35. Your image captures the glinty appearance of mirrors very well. The pulsed appearance when the image is rendered small is an artifact. The image shows M13 with its two attendant 8th-mag stars, and also NGC 6058 (which the RNCG gives as mag 13.5) just barely detectable (or maybe this is a brighter nearby star). Some of the bright stars shown are: 44 eta Herc 35 sigma Herc 12 lambda CrB 11 kappa CrB 18 upsilon CrB 14 iota CrB I think even my ancient version of IRIDFLAR uses 2000.0 coordinates, and I measure the center of the glint from Ir P3 B at roughly alpha = 15h 56m, delta = +32.9 degrees and the glint from Ir P35 at roughly alpha = 15h 59m, delta = +35.6 degrees. The predicted time from IRIDFLAR seems to have been much more accurate for Ir P35, a member of the operational array, than for Ir P3 B, a presumed spare, presumed to be under less precise control, and which seems to have glinted perhaps 8s later than indicated by IRIDFLAR. I think the trails end because you stopped recording; QuickSat indicates the objects didn't go into shadow until beyond the edges of your image. With the elsets for these objects just before and just after the events, it would probably be possible to make a quite accurate estimate of when you stopped recording. Cheers. Walter Nissen wnissen@tfn.net -81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation P.S. For the timings in my last message for Ir P38, I incorrectly reported that the stopwatch was 4.43 sec slow, when it was, in fact, about 4.43 sec fast (from 2 hours slow). The estimated times were correctly reported from my log. --- The Bill of Rights is the most valuable possession of every human being, even those who do not yet enjoy its rich benefits, because the light it beams into the world will eventually free all our sons and daughters. --- Latitude: 39.47070 Longitude: -79.33880 Altitude: 839.0 m Time Zone: UTC +0.0 h Iridium Coordinates Range Sat Solar Peak Std Maximum Flare Ir Date Time Azm El RA Decl (km) N Ill Azm Elev M FlrAng Mag Mag Mag Latitude Longitude 51 5- 5- 5 2:11:56.0 074 40 16h03 35.1 1095.7 D Lit 313 -19.4 R 1.62 0.6 -7.9 0.3 39.5205 -78.8207 35 5- 5- 5 2:12:01.5 073 41 16h00 36.0 1117.0 D Lit 313 -19.4 R 0.51 -2.8 -7.9 -3.1 39.4885 -79.1788 --- (extract from my ancient version of QuickSat): 39.471 79.339 2753. Newcomb, MD <-------- 2000 17.5 4 F F T F F *** 2005 May 5 *** Times are UT *** 1 5 920 H M S TIM AL AZI C U MAG REVS HGT SHD RNG EW PHS R A DEC 25262 Iridium 51 +3 1.0 T 2 11 56 .0 40 73 138 1.7 13.2 755 175 1099 1.0 54 16 3 35.4 2 12 1 .0 40 76 139 1.7 13.2 755 161 1095 1.0 52 1558 33.7 24968 Iridium 37 2 11 56 .0 41 70 138 20.8 13.2 784 221 1125 1.0 57 16 5 37.9 2 12 1 .0 41 72 138 20.8 13.2 784 209 1120 1.0 55 16 0 36.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 15 2005 - 20:23:25 EDT