Robert Fenske wrote about Tuesday evening March 26 Texas time: >Saw a sedate 61 degree pass of the Hubble Telescope last night. >... [T]his time I saw a -3 flare (which is the brightest I >think I've seen from HST) on its ascent about half way up to >its maximum elevation. Have others seen HST flares not near >culmination? I showed the same pass to a UT Austin police office who was wondering what I was doing loitering on the upper level of a campus parking garage. It was a very nice pass, but we didn't see any unusual brightening from here. I and others here have seen it flare away from culmination. Once at a star party quite a few people saw one brighter than Venus when it was over in the southeast well past culmination. It depends of course on where it's pointed. I think that solar panel flares aren't too common, but that flares from the aft shroud and/or aperture door are more frequent. The one certain thing I've read is that its front end never points closer than 50 degrees to the Sun even with the aperture door closed (and maybe something similar with respect to the Moon and Earth). Last night SPOT 3 (93-061A, 22823) flashed brighter than Jupiter only a degree or two from that planet and then later flashed about +1 close to Capella; it did at least a couple of more easy 1x flashes. Hoping SZ-3 will be in orbit long enough to get to see it! Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 29 2002 - 05:47:41 EST