Family satellite fun
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Thu, 25 Jun 1998 04:14:03 -0400
parents, sister, and I watched Iridium 20 do its thing! Neat!
Spot 3 is awesome. It seems to me that its bright flashes
get brighter as it gets farther away! The brightest one
Wednesday evening, 25 June UTC, seemed to me to be the one
at about 4:14:10, although there was another solid negative
mag. flash at about 4:13:48.
NOAA 7 did a strong negative mag. flash at about 3:58:10 on
June 25 UTC.
Iridium 40 had two maxima of about equal magnitude; the second
was about 25 seconds after the predicted flare. I'm still
wondering about the cause of these double flares. Could they
arise somehow from the satellite reorienting itself or moving
its solar panels at the time of the unpredicted flare?
The last two nights I've gotten something like 55-second
periods on the TRMM/ETS-7 H-2 rocket (25065, 97-74C).
Iridium 70 Delta rocket (25347, 98-32F) reached about +2.5,
plus or minus, Wednesday evening.
Cosmos 2333 rocket (24298, 96-51B) is still tumbling....
My Wednesday evening location was mobile, as I walked home from
the UT Austin campus.
Ed Cannon -- ecannon@mail.utexas.edu -- Austin, Texas, USA