Iridium flare and other obs
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Fri, 10 Jul 1998 04:06:05 -0400
For 30.286N, 97.739W (UT Austin campus) I had these
predictions for two almost simultaneous flares:
Date Time UTC Alt. Az. Mag.
---------- -------- ---- --- ----
1998-07-10 04:15:10 12 253 +2 Iridium 65
1998-07-10 04:15:17 10 253 -2 Iridium 75
Using one-power I only saw one flare, but it was more
like -4 than -2. It was really a good one, especially
considering how low in the sky it was. I assume that it
most likely was Iridium 75 rather than 65 because of the
predicted magnitude and time. (It may have peaked even a
few seconds later than 4:15:17.)
I saw Molniya 3-49 r1 (25380, 98-40B) again both Wednesday
and Thursday nights from UT campus. But it's going to be
too far west and too early Friday night, I think.
Thursday evening Cosmos 2347 (25088, 97-79A) made a really
good +1, near-zenith pass over here. It appeared brightly
almost the second it exited the shadow.
For low-inclination observers, another very good one here
Thursday evening was one of my favorites, UHF F2 Rk (22788,
93-56B), culmination 51 alt. at 185 az. Its maxima were
very easy to see even though the Sun was only 7.5 degrees
set; they must have been about zero magnitude. (The full
Moon was still very low in the east at that time.) So I
think I'm going to boost its Quicksat intrinsic magnitude
again, to +1.0. A couple of nights ago Mike McCants timed
its period at about 7.3 seconds.
Ed Cannon -- ecannon@mail.utexas.edu -- Austin, Texas, USA