I have just got a pass of the Iridium 33 over north of Italy (pass from 20.20 to 20.30 UTC). Despite the impact, the satellite seems to me to have its flaring surfaces almost intact, since I managed to observe bright flares (brighter than magnitude -2). The satellite seems to rotate with a period very close to 4 seconds. I observed two series of flares with such interval. The first one in the south-west part of my local sky and the second one in the north-west part, thus, I suppose that at least two of its main mission antennas are still intact. Between flares the satellite was often invisible. I must say that it is now a very nice object to see, and, indeed a nice object to model into my program (http://digilander.libero.it/SATrack/). Has anyone observed such flares from the satellite after the impact? Best Regards, Simone ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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