Iridium 39 and 41 flare observations

Alexander Seidel (ase@mail.stelljes.de)
Mon, 17 Nov 1997 18:14:27 +0100

Just before clouds moved in I saw two more Iridium flares in the local
evening twilight, at flare center time UTC 16:14:44, Az/Elev 196/30 deg
(Iridium 39, 97-69 D) and flare center time UTC 16:18:26, Az/Elev 199/28
deg (Iridium 41, 97-69 B).

The first, bright Iridium 39 flare (off-center-angle 0.11 deg at my
site, and observed to be max mag -5.5) was predicted right on time to
+/- 1 sec with Rob=B4s latest update of IRIDFLAR and a TLE epoch of
321.10648144, while the actual flare center time of Iridium 41
(off-center-angle 2.19 deg and seen max mag +1.0) was observed to be 7.5
to 8 sec late compared to the prediction run with the latest available
TLEs from Alan=B4s site, which were for epoch 320.90438716=20

Alex
Stade/Germany
N53.5932  E9.4683  6m