Bright Iridium flares again

Alexander Seidel (Alexander.Seidel@t-online.de)
Wed, 15 Oct 97 21:01 MET DST

Here are two more Iridium flare observations from me, thanks to the excellent 
prediction program of Randy John. Thanks also go to Bruno Tilgner, who emailed 
me personally a couple of days ago, providing me with predictions for my 
location generated from his own program, which is not public at the moment.

NORAD __date__ __time__ D azI eI azM eM azS _eS Phs Dur Mag  Obs COSPAR Ir
24837 97-10-15 16:57:30 S 179 49 265 88 263 -05 090   8  -1   AS 97030B 12
24869 97-10-15 18:33:03 S 120 48 081 56 282 -20 032  11  -2.5 AS 97034A 15

The first flare (mag -1) was predicted to have a minimum mirror angle of 1.1 
degrees for my location, the second (mag -2.5) flare was predicted to have a 
minimum mirror angle of 0.6 degrees. Both predictions were remarkably accurate 
to +/- 1 sec on the flare duration time centers! A good quality check of the 
prediction program.

In between the two flares (at UTC 18:27) Mir made another mag 0 pass just 2 
degrees south of Altair, at azimuth 196 degrees and elevation 41 degrees, before 
shadow entry.

Alex
Stade/Germany
N 53.5932   E 9.4683   6 m ASL