Finally managed to do some observing for the first time in a few weeks on Saturday (29/4). One object I was particularly keen to see was 24949 IRIDIUM 30 which was predicted to flare around 21:38UT. This was the first flare I've seen for ages and it was unusual - it became visible on time in the North East and gradually brightened over a period of some 20 seconds to around magnitude -1 after which it faded, again taking around 20 seconds to fade to invisibility at which point I tracked it to eclipse in binoculars. I've never seen a flare that lasted so long! Is this common or just a feature of the Motorola situation? Also observed the same night ... 26062 OCS - made a nice high elevation pass. It was definitely fluctuating in magnitude between 3 and 4 - this is a spherical object with I assume a fairly uniform surface - why the fluctuations? 20692 NOSS 2-1D - around mag 7, first time I have seen this object. It was faint even in my (v. old!) 16x50s and I couldn't find any other components of the trio. 25994 TERRA - This object moved S-N directly overhead - it was a bright mag 2 then suddenly faded when it was overhead to mag 3.5 - 4, and remained at that magnitude until eclipse. Whilst looking out for the Ir30 flare I saw to sats lowish in the East going N-S and close together, later I identified these as 23405 COSMOS 22976 r and 11269 COSMOS 1077 r. Also saw high elevation passes of 13154 COSMOS 1356 r and 13121 COSMOS 1346 r. Aurora fans look out - high activity last night and the next couple of days have auroral storm warnings due to a mass coronal ejection released from the sun on April 30th. Matt Fawcett 53.893N 0.273W ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.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 : Tue May 02 2000 - 01:35:59 PDT