Thread: Iridium
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Old June 28th 10, 03:39 PM posted to sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe
Giuseppe N. Gerbore
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Default Iridium


"Daniel Minge" ha scritto nel messaggio
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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? -