Penumbral Iridium flare and a fun morning
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 04:29:51 -0500
For last night (local time; 1:43:45 October 14 UTC), Iridflar
predicted a very bright penumbral flare of Iridium 36. The
bright ones usually seem bluish to me, but this one
definitely was yellowish instead. It was 40 degrees up, and
the Sun was 22 degrees below the horizon.
Sometimes things work out very nicely. Tuesday morning as
tired as I was, I went over to the park a block away with
one page of predictions for 14 potentially bright objects
and left the binocs at home, and in one hour (10:50-11:50
UTC) I was fortunate enough to see 10 of them -- Lacrosses 2
and 3, the decaying Foton debris object (debris piece "E",
25917, about +2.5 at a range of 240 km and good phase angle),
UARS, HST, a Deltas, a Zenit (Cosmos 2227 Rk, 22285), Cosmos
1953. I was disappointed that I did not see the new GPS
rocket (25934, 99-55B), and I failed to see two Zenits
(Cosmos 1943 Rk, 19120, and Cosmos 2237 Rk, 22566), but it
was great to see so many in such a short time with just
predictions and timepiece.
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/satellite.htm
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