Last night I was able to see at least a half-dozen flashes from Superbird A (89-041A, 20040) without magnification from roughly 3:16:49 to 3:18:52 Oct 25 UTC. (There probably were more that I missed while writing the others down.) I first found it with binoculars and then lined up its position just above a treetop, which served as a great reference point. Although the sky transparency was excellent, given the moonlight and the satellite being only about 26 degrees above the horizon, its brightest flashes may have been as bright as +2. I observed it and Gorizont 23 (91-046A, 21533), as well as some LEOs, from the Elisabet Ney Museum grounds: 30.307N, 97.727N, 150m. Iridium 24 (97-082B, 25105) did a nice pass in twilight, with several flashes of +1 magnitude to at least -1 if not -2. But the last couple of times I've timed it (watching one-power only), I sure can't see easily what its rotation period is. A note on the "one-power" term. In something I read somewhere it said our (dilated) eyes are sometimes said to be "1x7 binoculars", and I think that's what led me to use "one-power" (which I think I also read somewhere) since "naked eye" and "unaided eye" aren't correctly applicable, it seems to me, to those of us who wear eyeglasses or contact lenses. 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://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 25 2001 - 04:09:10 EDT