For all of you at latitude 60 south, your "flaring geosat season" is *now*! Here's a copy of my reminder of this topic from a year ago -- but with the links updated: "This is a reminder that "Flaring Geosat Season" is approaching! "For new folks, around the equinoxes operational geostationary satellites can brighten to much brighter magnitudes than usual, so that they can be much easier to observe. Along with the seasonality, the phenomenon is latitude-dependent as well. Here's slightly adapted version of a table of suggested optimum dates for various latitudes originally published by Rainer Kresken: latitude optimum date -80 01 September -60 04 September -40 09 September -20 15 September 0 23 September +20 30 September +40 07 October +60 12 October +80 15 October "Rainer's original, very informative message on the topic is at this location: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Sep-1999/0002.html "Last year about the end of September and into early October I was able to see several of them for a number of consecutive evenings using only my 10x50 binoculars. What I learned was to look at two or three easily recognizable asterisms at the correct declination. I use Highfly for geosat/near-geosynch satellite predictions. "One note I would add is that, apparently due to tolerances allowed for pointing of solar panels, the constraints on when the satellites can flare are somewhat flexible. Ones that are very accurately pointed at the Sun might flare according to very strict time constraints just near shadow entry and exit, but those that are more "off" from exact solar pointing can flare earlier and/or later than they "should" if they were more accurately pointed. I found last year that I could see them across quite a large expanse of the sky on each of the evenings. "A second note is that there are some operational ones that are not at zero inclination, and I believe that they can flare a somewhat different times due to that fact as well. "There's more information on this page of Jason Hatton's site in the section called "Operational geosats": http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonjasonp/hasohp//GEO.HTML#Operational "See also the paragraph about "beaming" on the VSOHP page about geosats: http://www.satobs.org/geosats.html Unquote. Note that these are operational geosats -- not to be confused with "flashing geosynchs", which are not operational. Last March, Mike McCants found about 60 flaring geosats, roughly one every five minutes during a marathon observing session -- and I got a look at almost all of them, also. With some good luck, in rare cases it's possible to see one without magnification! 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
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