Last night for some seconds during its pass here UME 2 (10675, 78-018B) exhibited "sparkles" similar to USA 81 and USA 32. It was flashing normally and then suddenly began to sparkle at about 2:01:50. These sparkles are actually very rapid flashes, too fast to time -- or at least faster than I can click. There was a brief pause in the sparkling so that there were actually two sub-episodes. While it was sparkling it was significantly brighter than at the ordinary maxima, perhaps one magnitude. (Again similar to USA 81 and 32.) The sparkling lasted roughly 23 to 34 seconds; that is, ordinary maxima resumed between 2:02:13 and 2:02:24, and they fit nicely with the maxima before the sparkling episode. PPAS: 78- 18 B 00-11-22 02:02:51 EC 95.4 0.3 28 3.41 mag 5->inv + sparkles Location was Mt. Bonnell, 30.321N, 97.773W, 250m (a city park which is only useful during our winter due to 10:00 p.m. curfew -- parking rules enforced). Have had good Mir passes the past three nights, and last night the best Iridium flare I've seen in quite a while. Our poor weather is resuming for the next two or three days or so (payback for the drought that gave us so many clear nights for months). Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Nov 22 2000 - 05:12:47 PST