We just admired a bright flare from Iridium 25 as it passed over our position (29.548 N, 98.558 W) at 02:09:55 UT 2007-05-18. To my eye, it seemed more orange and had a longer fading tail than other Iridium flares I've seen. (I didn't catch the rising part.) The satellite has now been in orbit almost ten years, and I wonder if there isn't an aging effect that might account for the differences. Have other observers seen such things, and do they correlate with satellite age? Or was this just a random event, perhaps due to pecularities of solar illumination? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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