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