If a sat flares it will be brighter than a simple brightness model suggests. Several sats do this. The BWGS tracks flaring sats ... If its orientation and structure is known, Rob Matson & others can model that to predict flares. An extreme case: the Iridiums can flare from mag 5 up to mag -8, an increase of 13 mag! Before the spin information was known, that would have been quite an error in predicted brightness ;-). As was discussed a few years ago, rocket bodies can flare when the sun, the rocket, and the observer lie in the same plane. So I like keeping an eye on rocket body passes! Best, Mark ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Fri May 18 2001 - 12:17:41 PDT