Observers in Europe, Africa and Western Asia might be able to see the change in brightness of some geostationary satellites close to position 17.8 deg East due to an annular eclipse. Annularity happens at 23:53 UTC (6-FEB-08) for the Astra cluster at 19.3 deg East: ASTRA 1F (1996-021A, ASTRA 1G (1997-076A), ASTRA 1H (1999-033A), ASTRA 1KR (2006-012A), ASTRA 1L (2007-016A). At 0:03 UTC (7-FEB-08) EUTELSAT W2 (1998-056A) at 16.2 deg East should experience an annular eclipse. In either case the eclipse will last for little less than half an hour with an expected drop in brightness by 1 mag during the final 7 minutes before annularity. Some observers in Central and South-East Asia might be able to witness a total eclipse for satellites close to 33.3 deg East. At 13:19 UTC (7-FEB-08) INTELSAT 802 (1997-031A) at 33.1 deg East will be in for a total eclipse and at 13:18 (7-FEB-08) it's the turn of EUROBIRD 3 (2003-43A) at 33.3 East. The total duration of the eclipse is 1:20 hours with totality lasting 1min 20 sec. Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 03 2008 - 21:29:49 UTC