Iridium 12 flare, "phase", solar elev., other 9/23/97 obs
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Tue, 23 Sep 1997 23:56:45 -0400
I'm happy to report having seen a monster Iridium flare Monday night!
NORAD date time Dir aI eI aM eM aS eS Phs Dur Mag Obs COSPAR
24837 97-09-23 01:58:50 S 131 48 084 57 102 -21 145 02 -6 EdC 97030B
It's hard to say for sure how bright it was. Jupiter was in the same
general part of the sky, and it was *many* times brighter than Jupiter.
Its apparent size (partially a function of the visual magnitude?) was
also larger than Jupiter's.
I think I missed the beginning of it. Within a couple of seconds after I
first saw it, it dropped down to about mag. +2 or so but continued to be
observable at one-power for possibly as long as 15 seconds.
To be accurate, I need to report some uncertainties due to my having only
an analog watch for this observation. (For most of my one-power observing
around UT, it's all I need.) (Maybe Mike M. was observing and saw it also
and got the exact time....)
time: 01:58:35 to 01:59:05 (1:58:50 +/- 15 seconds; hard to read)
aI: 123 to 137
eI: 52 to 44
Phs: 145-146 (or Quicksat's 35-34?)
I'm happy to say that I learned how to get the Sun's azimuth and elevation
using the freeware astronomy program Home Planet, which I have had for a
while but am still figuring out. So I won't send any more reports of "so
many minutes before or after the 10-degree twilight time"!
Regarding the phase angle in the Iridium reports, Ron defined it:
> 11) Phs: Sun phase angle. This is the Skymap convention:
> Satellite-Observer-Sun. Quicksat users should subtract their value from
> 180.
Regarding this, Jim Varney wrote:
> What we really need to report is the angle subtended from sun to
> satellite to observer. Unfortunately I don't know of any readily
> available program that calculates that.
I second Sue's point that Quicksat gives the sun - satellite - observer
angle, and I'll repeat her quote from Quicksat's documentation:
> "The Phs value is the sun-object-observer angle. A value of 0 indicates
> full phase, a value of 180 indicates new phase."
Continuing on this, Jeff Hunt quoted SatPro:
> "AsPh - The Astronomical Phase Angle in degrees. Phase Angle is defined as
> the angle subtended at the satellite between the Sun and ground station
> (observer). Small angles indicate that a greater portion of the sat is
> illuminated." This would be sun-sat-observer angle.
And Bram Dorreman wrote:
> 6. My prediction program uses the angle Sun-Satellite-observer.
Again, all of these (except the "Sun phase angle" that Ron has specified)
are the same as Quicksat's phase angle (Phs).
>----> The most important thing is that everyone report the value of the
*same* angle! So it appears that for Quicksat, SatPro, and the program
Bram uses, we should report the value of (180-program output angle).
Regarding RA and Dec, Bram also wrote:
> Fortunately my prediction program (written by Patrick Wils, also
> from Belgium) outputs the Right Ascension and declination and
> Azimuth and elevation of the culmination point.
The same is true of Quicksat; it generates Alt/Az and RA/Dec of every
prediction point -- and prediction points can be generated down to very
small increments (e.g., 50 points per object per pass, or more!).
Other obs: Monday evening I also saw at one-power objects 80-93B (12072,
Cosmos 1222 Rk) and 77-91B (10363, Cosmos 955 Rk). Only three objects
were predicted to be mag. 3.5 or brighter here this evening -- an
unusually small number in my (limited) experience. (By the way, I did
not see Iridiums 9, 10, 13, or 14, which also passed over here with
culminations from the zenith to the east. I didn't try to see two
others that culminated to the west -- 11 and 16.)
Ed Cannon
ecannon@mail.utexas.edu
Austin, Texas, USA
Observations and report from UT location: 30.29N, 97.74W, 165m