we (newbies) spotted Iridium 29 last night!

From: Brad, K1GTo (brad@k1gto.com)
Date: Tue Sep 26 2006 - 14:47:11 EDT

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    Hello all! 
    
    My fiancée and I went out last night for our first time trying to find an
    iridium satellite. We're really new at this so I don't have any
    sophisticated spot data for everyone, but we did see the satellite, and even
    managed to snap a picture of the event! We also took a few other star
    related photos for fun. 
    
    Photos and some more information is posted on our homepage wiki below. 
    
    http://www.k1gto.com/wiki/index.php/Astronomy
    
    
    The wiki also lists the coordinates where we did the spotting from. 
    
    
    Also, in the past I seem to remember having seen satellites/debris in orbit
    in the sky near sundown and sometimes the satellites would appear so close
    that I could make out the solar panels from the body. Was this my
    imagination, or do satellites really get that close? Even though Iridium 29
    was almost straight up last night, it was still just a speck of light. What
    about satellites that are nearing re-entry into the atmosphere, are those
    ones visible in greater detail? 
    
    
    --Brad
    
    
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