Well, I've been a bit intimidated to post any of my extremely amateur satellite "data," but since someone mentioned Iridium #63 on 9/21, I thought I would relay a story about my first Iridium sighting. I have been trying to observe a flare for some time now. You may recall earlier posts, I just couldn't seem to view one. Iridium #63 was due over my area at 6:10:10 EDT. I don't do any "observing" from my house, as I live in the suburbs of Utica, NY, and it's not a good place to look up from. I have a very nice site from which to look at the sky about 15 miles north of here, and that's the sky I'm familiar with. But, I had to be up at 5:30, and on my way to work by 6:15 that morning, so my driveway would have to do for #63. I recalled someone here saying that the timing on these things is deadly accurate, so I wanted to check the time that a nasa time server was providing. 6:05 saw me still trying to connect to the Internet (terrible ISP, getting cable in a week)....6:07.......6:08......finally connected, queried the server, and saw 6:08:57. My watch was 10 seconds fast..... Down the stairs to the front door, 6:09.....then I remembered.....177 degrees azimuth, 57 degrees altitude......but where the h*** is 177 degrees in my driveway?? I could haul back upstairs for a compas......6:09:59........okay, forget it. Outside, I knew where the ecliptic is, and guessed from there....looked up, and saw a nearly overcast sky.......6:10:05.......I was doomed. But, just as I was about to look down......BAM. I'm not good at guessing magnitudes, but there was a brief flash, had to be at least -6 (the center of the flash was 3.9 km east of me). Time stood still for about 30 seconds after that, while I imagined a piece of metal thousands of miles up bouncing light from 93 million miles away down onto my driveway. It was my first sighting of an Iridium. Totally awesome, to be scientifically accurate. Michael diLorenzo (near) Utica, New York North of the Equator, West of the Prime Meridian chiayk@pop.singnet.com.sg wrote: > Hi folks: > > Saw Iridium#63 putting out a brief but bright (predicted -8 mag) > flare just outside my window in despite a cloudy earling AM local time > (06:17:37) morning. The flare was on time. > > rgds > ykChia > 1.455N, 103.80255E,+8 UT,20m > http://www.geocities.com/ykchia_1999/ > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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