Irid 17, two flares for the price of one

jhunt@Radix.Net
Tue, 24 Nov 98 23:18:00

Hello,

I noted this evening that Iridium 17 (24870/97034B) provided
two flares at this location. The first (approx. mag 0) occurred 
approximately 10 seconds before the predicted flare (mag -2) 
at 23:09:58 UT 24 Nov.

I'm sure others have seen this but I haven't. After I saw the first 
flare, which I thought was the predicted flare, it made a curtain
call about 10 seconds later with the promised mag -2. Nice!

Also saw a very fast moving sat moving WSW to ENE high in the south east
quadrant of the sky at approximately 22:51 UT. It quickly went into 
the shadow before going below 60 deg. in altitude. 

Jeff Hunt<jhunt@radix.net>
38.51N/76.76W
http://www2.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html