On Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:39:44 +0200, "Giuseppe N. Gerbore"
wrote:


"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? -

I've downloaded and installed heavensat, but it doesn't have a help
file. I need to be able to install the satellite elements and most
importantly, how to exit the program. :-)

I see no mention of callsky in Google, Is it a satellite tracking
program ?

Minge