With the recent launch of the new Iridium sats i checked to see if they would flare or not. The latest Iridium.tle had them listed numerically so i changed them to Iridium A - E like they are in McCants.tle and i got a prediction for a -4 flare from Iridium A 27372 02005A for this evening (Mar 1 UTC). I think the designation should be B as the sequence is B-A-C-D-E unless B and A take turns leading. Anyways i went out and despite a hazy moonlit sky i saw Ir A/B begin to flare at 04:42:57 1 Mar UTC +/- 3 sec. Az 10 deg El 25 deg. It gradually brightened to approx mag -8 and stayed that way for about 10 sec while the entire flare sequence lasted over 30 sec. I didn't really time it but it was long. About 10 min later Ir 60 25276 98019E flared to a -6 but it was pale compared to the earlier one. Jari 49.40N 125.00W 30m Iridium A 1 27372U 02005A 02057.66081387 .00003269 00000-0 58347-3 0 284 2 27372 86.5837 103.0557 0016847 198.0882 162.0742 14.66610522 2190 Iridium B 1 27373U 02005B 02058.20047396 .00004526 00000-0 81062-3 0 207 2 27373 86.5770 102.8244 0011003 178.5131 181.6114 14.66597262 2270 Iridium C 1 27374U 02005C 02058.55397888 .00002838 00000-0 50673-3 0 286 2 27374 86.5789 102.6773 0008458 168.1009 192.0348 14.66620563 2327 Iridium D 1 27375U 02005D 02058.15081323 .00000077 00000-0 95435-5 0 276 2 27375 86.5773 102.8463 0010386 187.2087 172.8967 14.66609431 2267 Iridium E 1 27376U 02005E 02057.61118692 .00000780 00000-0 13624-3 0 232 2 27376 86.5772 103.0669 0011539 163.8681 196.2899 14.66612818 2187 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 01 2002 - 00:40:31 EST