Iridium + Okean flare + ...
Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@unicall.be)
Tue, 21 Oct 1997 23:08:51 +0100
After some weeks of holidays and bad wheather, I was finally
able to make some observations this evening.
Thanks to Rob Matson's Iridflar I was able to see my first
predicted Iridium flare with a magnitude +1 as predicted by
Rob (congratulations !) : Ir 15 at 18:34:11.2 UT
(Rob, you shouldn't be that shy not to mention your name
in your flare.txt help file :-)
Some minutes before I did saw another flare to about mag 0, taking
about 5 seconds from invisible for naked eye to mag 0, back to invisible.
Time was : 18:19:17.9 UT.
First I though it was a not-predicted Iridium flare, but I was wrong.
The brightening was also shorter than a typical Iridium.
Afterwards I was able to identify the object as 87- 62 A
= 18214 = Cosmos 1869 = Okean-OE prototype (as mentioned in a list
by Walter Nissen some time ago).
According to the PPAS, such a bright flash has never been observed
from this object.
Fleetsatcom 4 Atlas Centaur rocket = 80- 87 B = 12069 was easily
visible with my 7x35 binoculars at 5000 km flashing nicely with
a period of about 8 seconds.
!!
Thursday Oct 23, I will create the next PPAS update. So if you
have made some observations of flashers during the last weeks,
do not hesitate to share them with us and send them to the address
below in the PPAS format.
This evening in PPAS format :
80- 87 B 97-10-21 17:54 KJ 319.4 0.2 40 7.99 mag +6
87- 62 A 97-10-21 18:19:17.9 KJ flare to mag 0
88- 62 B 97-10-21 18:41 KJ S, mag +5.5
91- 19 B 97-10-21 18:48 KJ 105.4 1.0 2 53 mag +4->inv
Greetings,
Kurt Jonckheere
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Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@unicall.be) 51.2 N 2.9 E 4m ASL
(Old accelerations : http://uc2.unicall.be/kjonckheere/index.htm)
observations collector for the Belgian Working Group Satellites:
Send your observations of flashing satellites, preferrably in the correct
PPAS format to ppas@cds.plasma.mpe-garching.mpg.de
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