This evening 25 March at 20:15 local (UTC plus 12) I observed with the naked eye simultaneous Iridium flares from a location at Wellington waterfront (41.2861 S; 174.779 E at 0 degrees elevation.) These were from Iridium 28 1997-051-E and Iridium 94 2002-005-C Although I did not have an accurate means of timekeeping, the flare times according to Heavens Above were 20:18:38 for I.94 and 20:18:39 for I.28 respectively. To the naked eye they appeared to brighten and diminish at exactly the same time. Azimuth of both was 174 degrees- predicted magnitude of I.94 was -7 as against -3 for I.28, and respective altitudes were predicted as 25 degrees and 22 degrees. Ground tracks were very similar. I was only 2.6 km from the flare centre for Iridium 94, as against 17.8 km for Iridium 28. I did notice that the higher flare was brighter, though I would not have said it was such a marked difference in magnitude as that predicted. The sky was clear but being very close to the central city area there was considerable background light though it caused little difficulty with the observation. I would be interested to know how rare or otherwise sightings of simultaneous flares are. (Flares were predicted here at 20:31 and 20:32 on 23 March local from Iridium 33 and 91 respectively but unfortunately I was not able to attempt an observation at that time.) Robert Holdsworth Wainuiomata New Zealand 41.26100S, 174.94700E ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 25 2003 - 05:23:01 EST