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Old July 10th 07, 12:26 PM posted to sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe
galwacco
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Default I saw something!

On Jul 9, 11:49 pm, (DougD) wrote:
In article .com, galwacco wrote:





Hey Folks!


I got a question! I live in southern Brazil, declination 27. As I was
driving to work, I looked at the sky and I saw an object of aparent
magnitude of 3 bouncing to 2, it was no star , for it was 7:55am,
which in this season, is broad daylight already, and its magnitude
kept changing, I believe, because of its movement that reflect the sun
differently.


The object was moving quite fast at my zenith towards northwest, when
I called my wife's atention to look at it, it was gone.


The thing is, I've seen quite a few satelites already, and they move
waaaay too fast, this object too almost 20 seconds to disapear from my
sight.


My question is, is it possible to see our satelites or the ISS on
broad day light? If not, what exactly would that be?


I would say that it was probably an Iridium flare. The timing sounds about
right, and they can be seen in daylight. Heaven's Above web sight is great
for tracking and spotting these sats. If you can get your hands on a GPS,
you can get a customized projection that looks ahead for months, for both
daylight and evening. Because they depend on sunlight, they are typically
brightest after sunset and before dawn. The brightest magnitude for these
is -9, I've only seen what has been predicted as a -9 a few times, but
anything from about -4 to -8 can be pretty spectacular at night. They are
also fairly senstive to your position, so using the prediction software and
sticking to one observing area works best. Their software also allows you to
save multiple sighting area's, so you can have one for work, home, one
for a friend on the other side of the world, etc. I turned into an "Iridium
Junkie" about 8 years ago, and I've got about 12 friends out now bitten
by the same bug. It's kinda fun to know exactly when one will be overhead
and grab some friends or neighbors and tell them to follow your hand
across the sky, and when the sat flares, well, it can sure lead to a lot of
interesting questions!
Good luck, I hope you continue to enjoy them and get a chance to
at least see one in darkness, they can be very impressive!

D.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Very cool Doug!! I had no idea about those things! That one I reported
was my very first one and I thought it was soooo cool!
A couple of weeks ago, my 2 years old son tripped and feel on the
ground of our backyard, I went to see what happened and he was crying
a lot. Then as an atempt to make him stop crying, I pointed to the
moon, which was a full moon and told him to look at it.
Right at that very moment I saw a satelite passing by, it was also the
first time I'd seen one. Man, it was just awesome!!

It passed by really fast, and kind of drew a line path as it passed.
Since I bought my telescope, I started to look more at the sky, and
that is giving me more opportunities to glance cool things such as
iridium flares and satelites.

I downloaded this software called orbitron, which is supposed to give
me the exact time a determinate satelite is passing over where I am
situated, would you have any other software like that to indicate me?
Or, is that one I downloaded a good one?

So far I didn't have an opportunity to see anything, since it's rain
season and the sky is most of the nights covered up with clouds.

Thanks a lot folks!