early flaring geosats

From: Ed Cannon (edcannonsat@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Sep 20 2006 - 07:29:20 EDT

  • Next message: Greg Roberts: "Obs 19 Sept- some 17th Sept 2006"

    The last two evenings here have been beautiful.  Even though we're two 
    weeks from the peak date of flaring geosats for this latitude, with my 
    12x60 I've been able to see DBS 1 (93-078A, 22930), and the pair XM-1 
    (01-018A, 26761) and XM-2 (01-012A, 26724).  Tuesday evening I added one 
    of the ANIK F1/ANIK F1-R pair (00-076A, 26624; 05-036A, 28868).  Mike 
    put the telescope on this pair and found them not leading and trailing 
    but over/under, one north of the other.
    
    Of course I'm hoping for good weather a week from now, when they will be 
    brighter!
    
    For a graphical approach to observing flaring geosats, see Jeff Umbarger's
    Graphical Geosat Flare Calculator:
    
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Sep-2006/0029.html
    
    Mike McCants has released a new version of his special Highfly version
    which predicts eclipse entry and exit.  It sorts the output by azimuth.
    It's a small DOS program, a quick download; here's a direct link:
    
    http://users2.ev1.net/~mmccants/programs/highecl.zip
    
    Here's a message with some background information on flaring geosats:
    
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Sep-2005/0289.html
    
    Or search on the terms "flaring geosats" or "geosat flares", etc.
    
    Here's the "calendar" for the peak flaring date by latitude for the 
    September-October season of this phenomenon:
    
    lat.  peak date
    ====  =========
    -80   01 Sept
    -60   04 Sept
    -40   09 Sept
    -20   15 Sept
    0     23 Sept
    +20   30 Sept
    +40   07 Oct
    +60   12 Oct
    +80   15 Oct
    
    That's adapted from Rainer Kresken's message that started it all -- seven
    years ago!
    
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Sep-1999/0002.html
    
    Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA
    
    
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