Early Saturday Dec 1 Iridium 51 "?" (25262, 98-018A) and Iridium 5 (24795, 97-020D) both flared pretty nearly as predicted by Iridflar. Both were low in the south and quite long-lasting flares. Has the identity ambiguity between them been settled? Rod Sladen wrote about it: http://www.rod.sladen.org.uk/iridium5and51.htm Molniya 3-42 (22178). After a couple of more observations with some alternating brightness at the beginning of its visibility, I've decided that its period is 24.nn instead of 12.nn. It may do a phase shift, but I'm not sure about that yet. Its flash period seems to have accelerated from 24.34 to 24.11 seconds in just a few days: 92- 67 A 01-12-01 03:48:52 EC 482.3 0.3 20 24.11 +3.0->inv, 2ndaries 92- 67 A 01-11-25 04:14:09 EC 572.0 0.5 47 12.17 +3.0->inv In spite of the full Moon, Molniya 3-42 did quite a few one-power flashes, but I was not able to see Superbird A this time without binoculars. Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Dec 01 2001 - 03:32:59 EST