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"Mike Murphy" wrote in message
... On Thu, 20 May 2004 09:38:10 +0100, Martin Frey wrote: At 9.50 last night an exceptionally bright satellite went practically over my zenith - Starry Night says it was the ISS - but I've never seen it so bright - blazing through cloud that Vega couldn't begin to penetrate. I went out to spot it because, although I've seen the ISS many times, it was a very early time in the evening that was predicted. The print out that I was working to was some days old and the ISS was late but I persisted and then suddenly saw it aout of the corner of my eye and it was very, very bright never seen it so bright. It had the right motion for the ISS so I'm sure that it wasn't an Iridium flare. It was so bright that I expected people walking outside in the warm evening air to proclaim, "What the ****'s that?" but despite there being many evening strollers about nobody did. I guess people don't look up much. It was indeed bright. The "Heavens Above" site gave it as magnitude -0.7, but it appeared to be significantly brighter than this. Jupiter, high in the S at the time, seemed a fair comparison. I have seen the ISS "flare" before, but there was no evidence of it this time. The whole pass was gloriously brilliant, almost from when I first saw it just W of S to when it vanished behind trees to my east, still about 20-30 degrees above the horizon. Has the geometry of the station been changed in the last year or so? BTW, the ISS and the Iridium satellites have very different orbits. The Iridium "constellation" are polar orbiters so an Iridium flare normally passes south to north or north to south or somewhere near this. The latitude of the UK is close to the northernnmost point the ISS orbit attains, so an ISS pass is west to east or close thereto. The Iridium satellites are also normally only visible to the unaided eye during the "flare" and for a few seconds either side while the ISS brightness normally varies only slightly during the pass, except for entry / exit into the earth's shadow. -- - Yokel - oo oo OOO OOO OO 0 OO ) ( I ) ( ) ( /\ ) ( Yokel @ Ashurst New Forest SU 336 107 17m a.s.l. "Yokel" now posts via a spam-trap account. Replace my alias with stevejudd to reply. |
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