RE: Iridium Flares ground projection

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I've wondered about the spotlight projection myself, and don't think it
would be anything spectacular.  For Randy's 1200km distant Iridium,
assuming all the light falls in the 10x20km rectangle and the albedo of
the antenna is 100% (at 188x86cm) the light would be "diluted" (dimmed) by
about a factor of 8 BILLION! (or about 20 magnitudes from the sun itself).
I have a feeling this would be somewhere on the order of 100,000 times
dimmer insolation to the Earth as that from the moon (invisible to all
but superman).
Cheers,
-t

Tyler (Joe Stats) MacKenzie
Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/5918/
44.636N 63.595W 50m ASL

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