I (happened to) watch a -3 flare from Ir.4 at 18:09 Mar.03 in the east. I followed it to see if I could see the 'irid-dim' in az.115, but instead it brightened to about +3, before entering slow penumbral dimming. Due to clock-battery (or handling) problems I lost all lap times, but I guess the second brightening was about 40 seconds after the flare. I have given some thought to writing an irid-dim program -it doesn't seem difficult, but I would like to see if the phenomenon is interesting and observable first. It should be fairly constant, the forward MMA dimming the approaching near-zenith passes (at my latitude from about az.174 or 354). The left and right MMAs would hide the body 120 and 240 degrees from that direction, while receding. On the other hand, I failed four times to find a non-flaring Iridium in the evening in the West, approaching the 235 degree dimming. Perhaps the square (?) shape of the satellite body makes it almost non-illuminated there? -- bjorn.gimle@tietotech.se (office) -- -- b_gimle@algonet.se (home) http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle -- -- COSPAR 5919, MALMA, 59.2576 N, 18.6172 E, 23 m -- -- COSPAR 5918, HAMMARBY, 59.2985 N, 18.1045 E, 44 m -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 03 2001 - 11:31:50 PST