Greetings to SeeSat subscribers! There will be a bright Iridium 40 flare in Gemini this evening in Moscow. At 19:33:30 MSK (UT+0300) satellite will transit Saturn within a narrow path from approximately Dolgoprudny to Garden Ring and further to Moscow south. The flare will reach its maximum brightness (-8m) at 19:33:40 MSK about 4 degrees south from Saturn. With a distance to satellite 1000 km and angular size of Saturn's ring 45"x20" (1/3600 area of solar and lunar disc) the width of transit path is about 200 meters (0.2 km). Moscow spans 30 km from West to East and 38 km from North to South (within the Belt Road, suburbs not included). Preliminary calculations have shown the central line about 5 km East from Sternberg Astronomy Institute at Moscow University (Lat = 55.70, Lon = 37.55). Several dozen members of Moscow Astronomy Club were informed on this event at the Club Meeting yesterday. People are going to observe this event with the scopes and Philips 740 webcams from the Club building at Bauman's Garden. At the moment (2 hours before the event) the sky is clear with a 1-2 m/s wind from NW, so there are some chances. I know there are some subscribers from Moscow on this list. If you are reading this, please try to photograph the flare or take video. I am sure these flares can occur at other longitudes in mid-northern latitudes (Scandinavia, Britain, Canada). Please check out your local Iridium flare predictions at Heavens Above or with SkyMap of Iridflar sotware. Predictions of Iridium flares in Moscow are posted every week at http://hea.iki.rssi.ru/~denis/iridmsk.html (since August 1999 in English) or at my Russian page http://bigden.ru/ Good luck with your observations, and please post the photos and animations! Are there any images of Iridium passing through the ring of Saturn? By the way, can anybody make a precise lat minute prediction of the transit path? I got only approximate figures: 55.93N 37.56E 55.83N 37.59E 55.72N 37.62E 55.67N 37.64E 55.60N 37.67E Denis -- Denis V. Denissenko Space Research Institute (IKI) Profsoyuznaya st., 84/32 117997, Moscow, Russia +7-095-333-4078 (w) +7-916-564-8282 (m) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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