At 08:13 20/03/00 , Jonathan T Wojack wrote: >What is the inclination of the Iridium satellites? 86 degrees. >Once their orbits are >lowered, how bright might they get At a perigee of 250Km and directly overhead they would be about mag 3,so easy enough naked eye. They are a binocular object any time they are sunlit at the moment. get some predictions of heavens above and have a look. > and is it possible to watch them decay? That depends on what the satellite operators actually DO. But you can track them with binoculars whether they are Flashing or not. To bring them down takes time. As I said before this means maintaing satellite attitude as far as I can guess. I suspect they might try and make the satellites get to burn up well south of the equator if they can, just so as to be seen not creating problems for the board of directors, there arent many people south of 50s after all!! Such a procedure only works if the orbit is still eccentric when it decays, and re-entry occurs at perigee. This usually only happens with Molniya satellites. A recent Molniya decay was observed by many inhabitants of Western Australia, as it tracked from Albany on the south coast , to the timor sea/indian Ocean north of Wyndham, a distance of several thousand Km. Tony Beresford 34.96S, 138.633E ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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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