On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 23:48:59 +0100, (Anders
Eklöf) wrote:

Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 09:49:01 +0100, (Anders
Eklöf) wrote:

RichA wrote:

A--hole New Zealander.

https://mashable.com/2018/01/25/rock...for-astronomy/

Couldn't be worse than Iridium flsshes.
This is one satellite, Iridium are 88.

It might ruin some astrophotos, but so does Iridium and aircraft.

It is likely to be worse than either, because it is so bright, and
because it is bright across its entire path, not just in a flare zone.

Do you have ANYTHING to back up that claim?
Like having seen it. Or calculations?

Get a clue.

it's about 1,5 meters in diameter, being smaller than an Iridium
satellite. It also has many more reflective sides than Iridium, making
it impossible to be even nearly as bright - even in the flare zones.
From what I have read I expect it to be hard to spot. Mag 4 at best.

I do not expect it to be as bright, as I commented on some other post
here recently. For the reason you state, which is that its planar
reflective surfaces are much smaller than the Iridium antenna panels.
Mag 4 seems much too dim an estimate. The maximum brightness of an
Iridium flare is around mag -8. This disco ball satellite appears to
have panels about 1/30 the area of an Iridium antenna. But probably
more reflective. So we are talking about a difference of 3-4
magnitudes. That would put its flares at -4 or brighter- extremely
obvious to the human eye and more than enough to trash most of the
science in any telescopic image. And unlike an Iridium flare, this is
a tumbling body, which means a much wider area is catching specular
reflections, and that over the entire path of the satellite across the
sky.