"Daniel Minge" ha scritto nel messaggio
news
On Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:40:53 +0200, "Giuseppe N. Gerbore"
wrote:
"Daniel Minge" ha scritto nel messaggio
. ..
I've started looking out for Iridium flares.
I've noticed two things. They don't always flare at the apponted time.
Also their flares appear to be restricted to a certain part of the
sky. Namely in the south east at my location which is Adelaide,
South Australia.
Minge
True.
I always double-check heavens-above.com and callsky.com.
Heavens-above seems to be using more restricting conditions, such as sun
altitude (at least -10 degrees). I estimate a 20% misses.
I noticed that in winter the most frequent flares are SE and NW in summer
(Italy). This might be due to sunset/sunrise time variation.
Giuseppe
I use Orbitron which has a good flares predictor application.
I also see flares which are in the Northern sky.
Merv
Hi Daniel
Did you try heavensat? (
http://www.heavensat.ru/english/). I find it to be
the best among free satellite tracking programs. Displays stars and has
lots of other goodies. Try it.
I also use Orbitron, mainly for downloading new TLEs.
For Iridium flares I prefer to rely on heavens-above and callsky, because
TLEs do not bring informations useful for flare calculation. At least I
believe so; am I wrong? -