Greetings all, I finally managed a several-hour brainstorm and came up with an algorithm for coding the articulation of the solar arrays of Iridium satellites. I've tested it against the recent unexpected flares and "double flares" observed from SW Virginia (IR 41 & 77, 21 April), near Atlanta (IR 12 & 86, 26 March), in the UK (IR 5, 2 March) and (IR 35, 5 March). In all cases, the code predicted a flare off the solar arrays. The magnitudes have not been calibrated yet, so the code can only tell when the conditions are right for a solar array flare. The magnitudes predicted should only be interpreted as gross estimates since the solar array pointing is not known to the same accuracy as the MMAs, nor is the BRDF falloff with offaxis angle known. But at least we now have a tool that indicates when solar array flares can be expected. Obviously I'm keen to test to code out a little longer before releasing it. If I can get a few volunteers to provide their coordinates, I'll see when the next solar array flares are predicted for those locations. Cheers, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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