An all sky camera in Germany caught an extremely bright flare last night. https://twitter.com/Locastan_modder/status/1400090402888294404 This flare has been linked to Starlink 1129 [45046/20006C]. This Starlink satellite appears to have failed in mid-September 2020, as the SpaceTrack orbital elements show a transition from regular changes in orbital parameters to the smooth variations caused by decay in the atmosphere. For the 9 months since, the orbital altitude has decreased from the operation 549 km to 545 km. It would be interesting to observe more flares from failed Starlink satellites and determine the maximum brightness a flare can attain. Jonathan McDowell maintains a list of the status and statistics of Starlink satellites at https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html. He lists a total of 26 Starlink satellites as failed with decaying orbits. It may be that these satellites can produce similarly bright flares. Regards, Cees _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Wed Jun 02 2021 - 16:19:27 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Wed Jun 02 2021 - 21:19:27 UTC