Daniel Deak writes: > I was treated with a spectacular sight. In about 5 seconds, its > brightness rose to at least -6 or -7 at 00:11:26 UT (Mar. 7) and the > colour was light blue, something I've never seen with Iridium flares ! > The maximum lasted for a couple of seconds. It was the most > spectacular flare I've ever seen. Truly remarkable! Thanks so much for providing the observational details. Perhaps not quite as spectacular, another large satellite with a reputation for extremely bright glints is: UARS 9.8 4.6 0.0 4.2 v 46 1 21701U 91063B 00062.22664429 +.00001611 +00000-0 +15591-3 0 01112 2 21701 056.9826 080.2609 0005840 104.8128 255.3568 14.97977609463113 Thanks to Mike McCants, NASA Goddard's OIG and US SPACECOM for this elset. Last evening, 2000-03-07 005823.37, about 10 degrees below right of Aldebaran, it shot enough photons into my eye to reach magnitude -2, and did so while I had a plain view of Jupiter, Rigel, etc., making me very confident -2 is the right estimate, not -1 and not -3. Mir, which lately has developed a reputation for bright glints, as the solar panels are no longer so consistently collimated toward the Sun(?), is currently making spectacular passes at mid-Northern latitudes. These glints are not easily (or at all) predictable, so the key is to do a lot of observing. Wonders may come your way. Cheers. Walter Nissen wnissen@tfn.net -81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation --- Is your computer idle 99% of the time? The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) harnesses the power of thousands of small computers like yours to find huge prime numbers. 1999 Jun 1st, Nayan Hajratwala, one of 8000 people who have contributed CPU time, found the current world-record prime, 2^6972593 - 1, a 2098960-digit number, using the free GIMPS software and idle CPU time. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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