Bright Mir flare

Alexander Seidel (ase@planet-interkom.de)
Sat, 27 Nov 1999 17:28:51 +0100

I just observed Mir near itīs apex point from my site here in Stade near
Hamburg/Germany, reaching a maximum elevation of 58 degrees over the
Southern horizon in local twilight conditions, UTC 15:58. The exciting
thing about this observation is, that Mir flared up to what I estimate
to be at least mag -5 (!) or even a bit brighter high in the SSW, in any
case considerably brighter than Venus as it is at its brightest, for a
couple of seconds, before going down to a "normal" mag -0.5 again (at
highest elevation in the S). Never have I seen something spectacular
like this with Mir over all the past years. Although it was not
completely dark, I could follow Mir for another 2+ minutes, and did not
notice any other brightness variations, so it still seems to be in quite
a stable orientation mode, and what I saw probably was a "centerline"
specular reflection from the solar panels due to a very lucky
constellation of the angles involved.

What a cool sight! Just wanted to let you know, though it is another "I
saw Mir" report, sorry for that - but this time something special...

Alex  
-- 
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Alexander Seidel        My location on planet Earth
Dankersstrasse 22       N 53.5932  E 9.4683  6m asl
D-21680 Stade	        ---------------------------
Germany                 Phone/Fax  (+49) 4141 68772
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