Congratulations to Ron Lee on his 4th Iridium lunar flare! What's your success % up to now, Ron? Seems you've got it down to a science. > It was visible the entire field of view (perhaps .75 degree). This shows how accurately Ron had his telescope pointed. The duration of the "bright" portion of a lunar Iridium glint is comparable to that of a daytime solar Iridium glint. In other words, the spatial extent is extremely limited. If Ron had been off by less than 0.4 degrees cross-track, he would have missed it of course. But even along-track, if his pointing (or the prediction) was off by half a degree, he probably wouldn't have seen it. I encourage anyone with the appropriate equipment to try for one of these rare events while the constellation still has its orientation maintained. They are only visible 2 weeks out of each month (a week either side of full moon), and you need to be within a couple miles of the lunar flare track to have a good chance of seeing it. Best, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 11 2000 - 14:46:53 PDT