I just got this e-mail from a member of the local astronomical society Martin Lewicki (mlewicki@dove.net.au). Does this qualify as the earliest Iridium flare?. This report was less than 24 hours after the launch of the 2nd iridium cluster from Baikonur. I was able to find in my mail box for june 97, TLE's from OIG, postd by Vladimir agarapov, to confirm the satellite identity and using IRIDFLAR, that flares should have occurred. There were no references to Iridium flares in the June or July 97 output from Seesat. Due to a mixup, I lost the Aug97-dec97 e-mail archives. It also struck me that the VSOHP articles on Iridium flares dont have any story on what happened as Iridium sun glints were found. I thought it did but it may have been removed to give more explanetary material. ========================================== Just went over my log book and found this entry you might help identify. Date: 19 June 1997 Time: 18:10 CST Location: Queenstown South Australia Latitude: 34s35 Longitude:138e30 Glancing toward the west in late twilight I spot three yellowish starlike points of light moving together at "satelite speed" in a perfect line south to north (roughly parallel to west horizon) altitude ~10 degrees. They were spread about five degrees apart from each other. The first two were about first magnitude while the last was comparable to Sirius which was about 10 degrees above them as they travelled from azimuth ~245 -> ~260 (very rough estimate) After a few seconds they abruptly and simulataneuosly blinked out! There was no sound. At the time I though they most likely were military aircraft doing exercises with sychronized spotlights (but no plane sound?). It occurred to me a year later that they may have been newly launched Iridium satelites. I understand that these satelites were launched in clusters and initially may have been strung out in orbit close to each other while their reflective panels were synchonistically rotated and aligned - hence the simulataneous blinkout. I could not find Iridium elements for the the above period on the Net to plug into IRIDFLAR so I could not check this out. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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