Ed Cannon wrote: >Last night (about 0:53:30-0:55:30 Dec 30 UTC) I was watching >what proved to be a very bright ISS pass, very nearly as >bright as Jupiter, when it flared briefly -- about one or >two seconds -- to brighter than Venus; then it dropped back >to -2.5 or so and then finally gradually faded as it went >into the Earth's shadow. Hey Ed, how come you didn't come out to BCRC? :-) I was watching through my 8 inch and then it got so bright it was painful. :-) WWV was ticking along in the background and I wrote down the time as 00:55:00, but it probably was a few seconds earlier than that. See SeeSat output below. I again watched in my 8 inch and I was able to see ISS at about 8th-9th magnitude until about 45 seconds after "geometric shadow entry". See output below. lat 30.3153 lon -97.8663 height .16Km (BCRC) ISS 1 25544U 98067A 00365.52825231 .00071885 00000-0 66923-3 0 4456 2 25544 51.5756 222.3916 0007790 288.4004 95.0271 15.66676999120691 ISS 2000 DEC 30 NOTE: Coordinates are 1950 time alt azi R.A. dec range hgt sun 0054:45 53.5 358.7 0 47.5 66.4 285 232 2.9 0054:50 56.2 4.6 1 18.6 63.5 276 232 2.7 0054:55 58.7 11.8 1 45.0 60.2 269 232 2.5 I think it flared in between these two points. 0055:00 60.8 20.4 2 7.3 56.3 264 232 2.4 (gap of 1:15 here) time alt azi R.A. dec range hgt sun 0056:15 35.1 113.06 4 12.3 0.7 383 232 0.0 Geometric shadow entry. Turned fairly red after shadow entry. Dropped about 10 magnitudes (-2 to +8) here. 0056:20 33.2 114.5 4 15.6 -1.4 399 232 -0.1 0056:30 29.7 117.0 4 21.6 -5.3 434 232 -0.4 0056:40 26.6 118.9 4 26.9 -8.6 471 232 -0.7 0056:50 23.9 120.5 4 31.6 -11.4 508 232 -1.1 0057:00 21.5 121.8 4 35.9 -13.9 547 232 -1.4 When I finally lost it, the sun was about 1.4 degrees below its horizon. Mike McCants ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sat Dec 30 2000 - 10:29:28 PST