I wasn't sure whether it would be dark enough to see tonight's Shuttle launch from the Washington, DC area (5:20pm local time), but it turned out the Shuttle was easy to spot. After it had crossed from south to east, the Shuttle vanished all at once in an instant, which was a neat effect (I assume this was the moment of main engine shutdown). About 1 hour later, I saw an interesting pass of the ISS: As the ISS was first visible in the southwest (perhaps 10 degrees above the horizon), I saw what looked like an Iridium flare just above it. The flare was approximately the same brightness as the ISS (I would guess 0 magnitude), lasted about 5 seconds, and was moving from south to north just in front of the ISS. After the flare died out I could no longer see this satellite (all of this was unaided eye). This occurred at approximately 23:20 UTC. Heavens-above did not predict this flare -- was it indeed an Iridium or was it some other satellite? - Kevin Mangis 38.87N, 77.31W __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Thu Dec 06 2001 - 02:03:07 EST