Hi All, It's been quite a while since I posted anything here, but rest assured I've been lurking all along and archiving all the Superbird A flash report data. Thank you all who have continued monitoring this interesting (but long dead) satellite -- I don't believe there is another GEO satellite that has been timed and analyzed as much as this one. After more than 6 years of frequent monitoring by dozens of observers on at least 4 continents, the dynamics of this bird are pretty clear, while their causes remain a subject of debate. More on this in a follow-up post devoted to Superbird A -- there are a few surprises! I wanted to thank Russell Pinizzotto for his report of "double flares" from a couple Iridium satellites -- and Kevin Fetter for correctly identifying the cause. Only a couple dozen people have made deliberate attempts to observe solar panel flares from Iridium, so it's nice to have the occasional "double flare" report to call attention to this predictable phenomenon. While IRIDFLAR is admittedly not as easy to use as Chris Peat's Heavens-Above web-based predictor, it does have that one advantage. ;-) (That, and the much harder to observe lunar Iridium flares.) Special thanks also to Bjorn Gimle for his posts analyzing Dave Kerr's inadvertent imaging of an Iridium solar array flare, and to both Bjorn and Ed Cannon for posting information about where and when to see Superbird in the U.S. on this go-around. I've been so tied up with sungrazing comet searches (and software to assist in this endeavor) that I've had little time for satellite tracking. But with Walter's reminder that we've passed the 8-year milestone for Seesat, I thought this was as good a time as any to address some of the old topics near and dear to my heart, and perhaps with some luck I'll find time to tackle the last year's worth of Superbird data. Best wishes, Rob Matson ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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