Hi list, The ISS manages to make continuous surprise performances for me. We've had rather unfavorable weather for quite a while, and last Saturday was no different. So it was pure coincidence that I was outside, only to see that the sky was utterly starless due to a high and very thick atmospheric haze. I was about to go back in when I noticed what looked like a flare in the SE, ~20° above the horizon. My first guess surely was Iridium, because of the notable intensity despite the thick haze, though it lasted much too long. Turned out to be the ISS, passing well over -2.5 magnitude before shadow entry. Maybe the nicest ISS pass for me so far. Knowing that there will be more good ISS passes the following days, I took the chance to have a look at it with my binocs this evening, since the weather has cleared considerably. Interestingly enough, the ISS was (is, in fact) lead by a fainter object a slight bit below its direction of travel, and after a while I noticed that this leader was lead itself by a yet _much_ fainter object, again a bit lower. The entire formation spanned no more than 5°, maybe 3° or less. I'm not aware as of now what these leading objects were (are), or if there were more of them too faint to be seen, but I'm sure I'll find out soon. :) CU! Markus (E8.7434, N51.7264, 113m, MEST) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 08 2001 - 15:42:34 EDT