USA 32 maximum display times

From: Ed Cannon (edcannonsat@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jun 03 2001 - 17:09:53 PDT

  • Next message: Jeff Hunt: "Re: Intrinsic magnitude of ISS?"

    Below are some rough "maximum display" times for USA 32 (19460, 88-078A) 
    from the past several nights.  By "maximum display", I mean the few 
    seconds per pass when it brightened by at least 2 magnitudes and also 
    flashed extremely rapidly.  During the maximum display time, it's easily 
    visible without magnification, while during most of a pass, my 
    experience is that it's generally more like +4 and brightens about 0.5 
    magnitude every 1.nn second.  I really do think that the maximum display
    is in some way analogous to a normal specular flare, in that enough 
    observations might allow a predictable pattern to be discovered.  Times 
    are UTC:
    
    2001/05/28 03:09:36 to 03:09:40
    2001/05/31 03:16:46 to 03:16:51
    2001/06/01 02:45:27 (only one click during max. display due to clouds)
    2001/06/03 03:23:24 to 03:23:29
    
    I'm sure that I have quite a few more such timings for USA 32 as well 
    as its apparent twin USA 81, although it would take some work to dig 
    them up and organize them.
    
    By the way, in a telescope (Thanks, Mike!) the maximum displays of it
    and USA 81 are awesome.  Maybe Ulrich or others who can do that sort
    of thing can get some good video!
    
    Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
    
    
    __________________________________________________
    Do You Yahoo!?
    Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
    a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    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 : Sun Jun 03 2001 - 17:10:05 PDT