Iridium flares from "?" objects
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Thu, 16 Dec 1999 02:20:07 -0600
Monday evening local time Iridium 77 ? (25471, 98-51E)
flared much brighter than predicted; in fact, it outshone
Iridium 43 (25039, 97-69A) which followed it by less than
two minutes and was predicted -5. This was from a couple
of blocks north of UT Austin.
Tuesday evening, in spite of a lot of West Texas dust
significantly reducing limiting magnitude, Iridium 82 ?
(25467, 98-51A) appeared at the predicted time, so it must
have been fairly close to the predicted -5.
I heard from two people at work, one via e-mail, regarding
the upcoming full Moon at perigee, etc.
Sky & Telescope has weighed in on the upcoming full Moon
situation but doesn't mention the Earth perihelion aspect:
http://www.skypub.com/news/news.shtml
Kind of neat side-by-side photos of the full Moon at apogee
and perigee.
The "Stargazer" script for the week of Dec. 12-19 ("1149th
show") cites the "Old Farmer's Almanac" regarding this
"brightest full Moon in 133 years" business:
http://www.jackstargazer.com/scriptoftheweek.html
My prediction: It will be totally cloudy all over the
whole world -- another sign of the impending Y2K doom....
(-:
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
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