Landsat 4 - Bright Pass
Mir16609@aol.com
Mon, 9 Feb 1998 19:35:29 EST
First let me thank all of those who responded to my daylight Iridium pass
question. If the weather holds up and the pass is visible, I'll report the
observation.
This is my second consecutive clear night in Maryland and I'm finally getting
to see the usually unexpected observations (LACE crossing the path of C1151
Rk) and brighter-than-expected passes (C1833 Rk reaching a 1.5mag). Tonight's
first Landsat 4 (13367), pass surprised me. Normally Landsats 4 and 5 are
fairly easy to spot using 10x50 binolulars. They are rarely visible (to me)
at 1x. Tonight Landsat 4 went to a -1 to -2 for about 10-15 seconds at
18:47:00-18:47:15 EST (23:47:00-23:47:00). It did a pretty fair imitation of
the Mir for a few seconds. At the time it was at about Az=50 deg El=20 deg.
At any rate it's nice to be reporting on an actual observation rather than a
news report.
Cheers.
Don Gardner
Homepage: http://members.aol.com/mir16609/
76.8419 W, 39.1796 N, 34m ASL