Hello List, Two years ago I've taken pictures of two Iridium flares between Jupiter and Saturn: Aug. 12th (http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~denis/ir20000812.html, separation 7.5 degrees) and Sep. 27th (http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~denis/ir20000927.html, 10.5 degrees). Now it's time for something more difficult! There's a series of flares in Ursa Major near (or between) Alcor and Mizar observed in central Russia these days. Two stars are 12 arcminutes (0.2 degree) apart, so the pass can only be visible from a very narrow band on Earth. Rough calculations show it should be a few (appr. two or three) kilometers wide (780km/57/5 without taking into account height above the horizon). This thing is yet more rare than Lunar transits (visible diameter of the Moon is 2.5 times larger). This morning I tried to observe the best flare like this for my location. The case was very difficult 'cause Sun was only 7.5 deg below horizon, but under pretty clear skies both stars were easily seen with the naked eye. The -6 mag flare materialized very close to dimmer (4.0m) Alcor but I'm afraid Iridium 7 passed above it. I guess I have missed it "scoring a goal" by a couple of kilometers - instead of going to a darker place in the park 1 km north from my home I should have headed south. I even took a 25-30 sec exposure with 3.5/50 lense and 400 film. Let's wait and see what I got there. Go to http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~denis/iridmsk.html and click on 5-30 3:35:33.7 flare to see sky chart. The next flare will be 5-31 3:29:26.3. I am 4 hours ahead of UT. The question is: can anybody plot the path of visibility of this rare events or generate the table with the longitudes and latitudes of southern and northern limits? Is there a software for predicting visibility maps of Lunar transits also available? By the way, coordinates of two stars are: R.A. = 13h 24m 02.1s, Dec. = +54o55'02" (Mizar), R.A. = 13h 25m 20.1s, Dec. = +54o58'48" (Alcor). Denis in Moscow ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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/sat/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 30 2002 - 08:52:13 EDT