#1
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I saw something!
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? |
#2
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I saw something!
"galwacco" wrote:
My question is, is it possible to see our satelites or the ISS on broad day light? If not, what exactly would that be? It sounds like you saw an Iridium flare. Some of then are bright enough to see in the daytime. Heavens-above.com can give you a list of times and locations, if you log onto that page. --Bill Thompson |
#3
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I saw something!
On Jul 6, 12:19 pm, "William R Thompson"
wrote: "galwacco" wrote: My question is, is it possible to see our satelites or the ISS on broad day light? If not, what exactly would that be? It sounds like you saw an Iridium flare. Some of then are bright enough to see in the daytime. Heavens-above.com can give you a list of times and locations, if you log onto that page. --Bill Thompson Hmmmm! I take that!! COOOL!! Thank you Bill!! |
#4
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I saw something!
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. |
#5
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I saw something!
Doug? Didn't I just see you somewhere else on usenet?
"Small world syndrome" Brian -- http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html Quake "predictions": http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? |
#6
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I saw something!
In article , Skywise wrote:
Doug? Didn't I just see you somewhere else on usenet? "Small world syndrome" Brian Hey, what can I say?! Lasers, Iridiums, it's all kinda lumped together... Actually, I got started in the Iridium stuff when my biz partner in LA got the contract for the worldwide Iridium "road show", and I helped him out on some of the lighting, etc. After spotting my first one about 5 years ago, I've been bitten. I've even got about 20-30 different dig. video clips of flares that I shot both here in Canada and from where I was living in Mpls. Now that takes some dedication, as well as some humilty for being seen pointing a video camera at nothing in the sky and then trying to get my kids to watch.. Now they're turning into "bugs"... Sooooo, what's your excuse!?!!! d. |
#7
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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! |
#8
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I saw something!
In article . com, galwacco wrote:
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! You're very welcome! I'm not familiar with orbitron, I just use the Heaven's Above website: http://www.heavens-above.com/ It's free, you just need to register and also find your earth coord. to get the predictions. They do have look up tables on the site, but the best results are if you can get a GPS and do a reading from your location (altitude also figures into this as well). A fairly good way to get this is using Google Earth. You can get your lat, lon, and altitude from just zooming in on your location and then cutting and pasting from the software. I also use Starry Night Pro, which is kinda pricey astro software, mine is kinda an older version, and I think there are less expensive versions than the Pro. It's great software if you own a telescope, and it has tons of features that make life a lot easier if you're trying to spot sat's. I use the "find" function, and just type in "Iridium" as a search term and it will list all of the sats, and highlight the ones that will be observable from your location. You can then tag which ever ones that match up with the Heaven's Above predictions, and it will draw in the sat. path across the sky for your location and track it's motion in real time, or you can fast forward, etc. to get a preview of where to be looking, etc. It also gives out magnitude (brightness) data in real time, but it doesn't track with Heaven's Above, HA's has always been more accurate as far as predictions of magnitude. I usually go into HA about every two weeks and grab a couple of weeks Iridium predictions for my location. I cut and paste them into a desktop file, and then I go through and cut out anything that is less then -4 in magnitude, it ends up looking something like this: date Time Mag Alt. Azimuth Dist. to Flare Mag2 Sat. 10 Jul 04:48:18 -4 12° 67° (ENE) 48.1 km (W) -5 Iridium 55 So this is the base HA prediction's that you get. There's the date, the time in your location that it's rising above the horizon. The altitude where it will flare, the azimuth, or basically the compass heading of it's origin. The distance to flare is kinda important, it tells you how far away from the absolute center of the reflected light you are. The mag2 is the absolute brightest mag. that the sat. will reflect, the first mag. is the reduced mag. due to your observing spot being not directly under the spot of reflection. So, you might see a mag2 of -8, but the mag for your location may only be -4 because you're 80km away from the point on earth where the most light is bounced back from the sattelite. There's a much better explanation of all this on the HA web site, plus they track more than just the Iridiums, they also track the Int. Space Station, as well as the Space Shuttle when it's up, next one I think is going up the first week or so of August. They're fun to look at as well, when the two are docked together, with even binoculars, you can make out two seperate objects going across the sky together. There are also some real oddbal sats, I've seen one which was actually a group of 3 satellites that I believe were tethered together, ( I think), but if really spooked me the first time I saw this triangle of lights moving together across the sky, I thought I had seen my first UFO!! Anyway, sign up for HA, it's worth it if you really want to track satellites, and it's free! Good luck, great viewing!! d. |
#9
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I saw something!
On Jul 10, 3:36 pm, (DougD) wrote:
In article . com, galwacco wrote: 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! You're very welcome! I'm not familiar with orbitron, I just use the Heaven's Above website:http://www.heavens-above.com/ It's free, you just need to register and also find your earth coord. to get the predictions. They do have look up tables on the site, but the best results are if you can get a GPS and do a reading from your location (altitude also figures into this as well). A fairly good way to get this is using Google Earth. You can get your lat, lon, and altitude from just zooming in on your location and then cutting and pasting from the software. I also use Starry Night Pro, which is kinda pricey astro software, mine is kinda an older version, and I think there are less expensive versions than the Pro. It's great software if you own a telescope, and it has tons of features that make life a lot easier if you're trying to spot sat's. I use the "find" function, and just type in "Iridium" as a search term and it will list all of the sats, and highlight the ones that will be observable from your location. You can then tag which ever ones that match up with the Heaven's Above predictions, and it will draw in the sat. path across the sky for your location and track it's motion in real time, or you can fast forward, etc. to get a preview of where to be looking, etc. It also gives out magnitude (brightness) data in real time, but it doesn't track with Heaven's Above, HA's has always been more accurate as far as predictions of magnitude. I usually go into HA about every two weeks and grab a couple of weeks Iridium predictions for my location. I cut and paste them into a desktop file, and then I go through and cut out anything that is less then -4 in magnitude, it ends up looking something like this: date Time Mag Alt. Azimuth Dist. to Flare Mag2 Sat. 10 Jul 04:48:18 -4 12° 67° (ENE) 48.1 km (W) -5 Iridium 55 So this is the base HA prediction's that you get. There's the date, the time in your location that it's rising above the horizon. The altitude where it will flare, the azimuth, or basically the compass heading of it's origin. The distance to flare is kinda important, it tells you how far away from the absolute center of the reflected light you are. The mag2 is the absolute brightest mag. that the sat. will reflect, the first mag. is the reduced mag. due to your observing spot being not directly under the spot of reflection. So, you might see a mag2 of -8, but the mag for your location may only be -4 because you're 80km away from the point on earth where the most light is bounced back from the sattelite. There's a much better explanation of all this on the HA web site, plus they track more than just the Iridiums, they also track the Int. Space Station, as well as the Space Shuttle when it's up, next one I think is going up the first week or so of August. They're fun to look at as well, when the two are docked together, with even binoculars, you can make out two seperate objects going across the sky together. There are also some real oddbal sats, I've seen one which was actually a group of 3 satellites that I believe were tethered together, ( I think), but if really spooked me the first time I saw this triangle of lights moving together across the sky, I thought I had seen my first UFO!! Anyway, sign up for HA, it's worth it if you really want to track satellites, and it's free! Good luck, great viewing!! d. WOW Doug!! What a lesson! I've done what you told me! Printed a whole bunch of flares, like I said the weather is pretty bad in here, but it seems that it will clean up for the weekend. I can't wait to do some spottings! Hey! I think I've been beaten by the bug!! |
#10
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I saw something!
In article . com, galwacco wrote:
WOW Doug!! What a lesson! I've done what you told me! Printed a whole bunch of flares, like I said the weather is pretty bad in here, but it seems that it will clean up for the weekend. I can't wait to do some spottings! Hey! I think I've been beaten by the bug!! Well, good for you! The key is patience, and NOT trying to spot everyone that's listed. Try and limit your choices to flares that will have a magnitude from about -4 to -8, -9 (the brightest). Going after the -1's can be difficult as they aren't going to flare that bright, and the time before they peak is much visibly shorter, which makes them more difficult to find. Starting at a -4, you should be able to see the sat. as it transits from below the horizon with the naked eye right up until the flare, and then continue to see it travel on from there. And this is even more important if you have light pollution from the location you are in. It's worth a trip if you can get out of town and away from city light, you just need to find that spot and put those coord. into your prediction software. Well, great luck with it all, let us know when you get to see your first -7 or -8!! D. Oh, one last hint: I've found that if I say, take a months worth of predictions from Heaven's Above, and then I go back to see what's coming up after that month has passed, sometimes those predictions will have changed. It's worth it to go back and update your predictions during the week that you will be looking as I've seen for whatever reasons, sat magnitudes can drop or go up over a period of time relative to when the prediction was first made. And depending where you are, you may find that there may be a whole month or more that goes by where there aren't any really bright observations to be made. It just works out where the Iridiums path reletive to you can shift over time, and then you find yourself "stuck" in between the best paths for your location. They will come back, I've noticed now that I've moved further north, that there are more periods of low observation for maybe up to two months at a time, whereas there were always something to see when I was lower down in the Midwest US. Again, good luck! |
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