Yes, I have made an Excel spreadsheet (using Solver) to fit rotation axis and panel angle(s) to observations. After that, it predicts the track on the sky for reflections at any date/time, that you can match with predicted track to see if you have an intersection (while sunlit). It needs a minimum of three observations of (different) positions of BRIGHTEST flashes (or start+end at approximately equal magnitudes) (brighter than about +7 for a GEO). They should be spread out over a period of months, and/or widely varying declinations. With more than three obs over a long period, the precession of the axis can also be determined, otherwise the predictions will lose their accuracy over the following year. Rob Matson first did this successfully for Superbird-A #20040, and I have later improved the fit. But not lately. The largest tedium is washing out good observations from the wealth of email text messages. There is no accepted reporting format allowing search for just these spec(tac)ular flashes. Search "superbird A" site:satobs.org /Björn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Derek C Breit" >> geosynch flasher. At 12:22AM local time (06:22 30 Jan 2009 UT) it was >> flashing to about magnitude 1.5 every 46 seconds or so. Over the next >> few minutes the flashes were fainter and fainter. I'm at the George >> observatory, 29 22 30 N, 95 05 37 W, near Houston TX. Any guess what >> that was? >> > > > Is there a way to predict such occurances??? > > Derek ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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