In "observations from Netherlands" Paul Maley mentioned that with respect to a flasher that he saw, Iridium 9 (24838, 97-030C) was at the right place at the right time. When I checked for candidates, it seemed to me that also it was going in the correct direction, north to south. Be that as it may, I was curious and checked to see if Ir 9 would pass here, and it did, and I saw four flashes, two about +0 or -1 at about 00:08:39.26 and 00:08:47.55. Of the three flashes for which I got clicks, the period for the two cycles was about 8.35 seconds. If it wasn't Ir 9, I'll add my "wonder what it was?" to Paul's! By the way, a couple of months ago Iridium 9 maneuvers were discussed on SeeSat: http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Sep-2000/0248.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Sep-2000/0264.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-2000/0145.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-2000/0159.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-2000/0161.html http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/Oct-2000/0233.html It now seems possible to me that the deorbit maneuvers mentioned by Chris Peat in the last of those messages may never be completed, but it is in an orbit about 160 km (100 miles) below the operational one. Iridium 14 (24836, 97-030A) followed less than two minutes after Ir 9 and also flashed a couple of times -- directly above the Moon, and later Iridium 11 (24842, 97-030G) also flashed a couple of times. The 97-030 launch seems to have run into some really bad luck. My fourth Iridium of the night was a double minor (+3) flare by Iridium 12 as it was heading down in the north. Saw the same ISS-Shuttle pass as Paul Gabriel! From here I thought they were a little brighter than Saturn. I recorded shadow entry time of about 00:30:14.7, pretty close agreement with Paul, considering that I was observing from the UT Austin campus, and there was a bit of variable cloud in evidence here. This week I've seen a couple of flares from SERT 2 (04327, 70-009A), which I have been expecting since it did that so consistently on many passes last winter. It brightens to +2 for 15 to 30 seconds north of culmination. The range was more than 1100 km last night. 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://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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