Unusually busy night, NIMBOSTRATUS 1 has broken up finally... UNID sat, mag.0, seen at approx 30· NNE headed N at approx.21:40:00 EDT, entered shadow at approx 21:42:00 EDT at 15·N, bright but very slow, cannot find match. UNID flare at 21:43:10 EDT at approx 70·E headed SSE, mag. 0 Cosmos 405 Rocket passed just below Arcturus at 22:04:10 EDT, moving very fast, or my imagination? at 22:20:40 EDT two sats passed each other at approx 25·-30· ESE one headed N and one headed SSE, cannot find a match for either...any clues? Observed a very bright mag. -3 to -5 flare at approx 36· ENE for about 4 seconds at approx 22:35:00 Heavens-Above shows IRIDIUM 59 predicted to flare at 22:34:41 at 38· ENE, obviously a good match but my time is not accurate enough to say it was late because at the moment the flare appeared I was hugging a dear friend goodbye and suddenly shouted "WOW, look at that!" in her left ear. Sharon (my friend), now slightly deafened, turned in time to see it also and agreed that it was very bright...fortunately she is used to this type of behavior... What is unusual for me is that with Iridium flares we usually seem to get all or nothing, that is if you are within 1 km of the predicted path, whammo, big flare - right on time; more than 1 km off the track, nada, zip, zilch. After many a wild goose chase I basically gave up on looking for flares unless I was withi 2 km of the predicted path. Looking after the fact, This time we were predicted to be 19 km off the track, with a mag. -4 flare, and there it was, right at mag. -4. This would be the first time I have seen a perfect "partial" Iridium flare just as predicted by heavens-above.com. So the question is:What is the normal "corridor of visibility" for the Iridium flares as seen by others? My experience indicated that one would need to be within + or - 1 km of the predicted track, or not woth bothering...until tonight. Have I missed a zillion "partial" flares? Tom Troszak Asheville, NC USA 35.601 N, -82.504W ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 10 2000 - 21:48:20 PDT