String of Pearls Iridium Flares
Ron Lee (ronlee@pcisys.net)
Thu, 19 Feb 1998 06:00:18 -0700
Wow, what an amazing site! Last night I ran my Iridium
elset to see if I had a good pass this morning...yes I did.
I woke up a bit early to see if REAL elsets were available
and they were. I reran Skymap and they were off after 23 hours.
Good thing I checked. Then I had a thought...run Iridflar
and guess what? They were supposed to flare!!!! I might see
5, yes 5, iridium flares at the same time.
Oh my. need to photograph it. Where is the camera, film, tripod
and cable release...only 10 minutes to go. I find everything,
load the filmand go out. The flare is about 10 degrees away from
the moon so I set up the tripod behind a tree.
Everything is set so I look up and try to find the stars..oh geez
which ones are they...check the map again. ok, that far away from
Vega..look, look, look.. there is a rapidly rotating object, about
twice per second. Must be the rocket body.
Still not sure I am looking in the right place so scan and there are
TWO! Look some more. The first three are equally spaced then a wider
separation and two more. OK, that is nice. Follow them a bit in the
binoculars. Reach down in my pocket for my glasses.
I am thinking...as soon as one starts to flare, put my glasses on and
watch visually. Then they start to brighten a bit...I put my glasses
on and they increase more..one bye one until there is a string of pearls
of lights across the sky just like Comet Levy-Shoemaker. It was
beautiful. The middle one was a magnitude or two brighter than the others
And I may have gotten it on film if I did not get the tree in the way.
Thanks Rob (the Skymap dude and Iridflar dude)
Ron Lee
PS the obs of the flares was about 12:44:xx ut on 19 feb 98 from Falcon,
CO (38.9478, -104.5614, 2073 m)