Friends, I sent this message, or so I thought, last week. I just now discovered that it didn't go through. If for some reason it did go through and you are receiving it for a second time, I apologize. I'm sure many of you share my sense of appreciation for the topic of this message, i.e. the special nature of iridium flares. :~) Here is the original message.... Following is a story in which I describe two of my most recent iridium flare experiences. A few days ago I was to attend a meeting but I deliberately went in a few minutes late so I could catch a glimpse of what turned out to be a pristine iridium flare that's dazzling white light pierced the twilight sky like no other that I have ever seen before. It saturated my vision for about three seconds before it winked out as fast as it appeared. I could not have imagined a better combination of brightness of satellite and a tonal quality for the sky to maximize the effect. Now I think that the -8 "twilight" flares may be the most beautiful of all. You can't see them gradually building in brightness like the ones that shine at night so when they make their brilliant appearance they bring on a brief almost unexpected surprise! Then this afternoon, a few minutes before 6:00 I was standing in my neighbor's driveway nervously awaiting a much anticipated -8.3 flare in a daylight sky, far from the sun. About a minute before the big event, intensely excited about what was about to happen, I overruled my introverted nature and hollered at a man walking by with what appeared to be three of his grand kids. I yelled, "Sir, Sir, would you like to see the light of a satellite shining down to the earth about a minute from now?" Luckily for my peace of mind he said, "Sure". We gathered quickly. As we were all looking up, with mouths gaping, the man said, "How odd we must look to those people driving by...." I smiled then began a count down at the moment my watch alarm began its peep, peep, peep. One, two, three, four, five, six, "There it is!", I yelled. [Man was I relieved when it showed up because there have been times when nothing happened, like when I wrote a bunch of friends about a "you have to see this iridium flare" only to find out that I made a mistake in converting from 24 hour time!] Most of us saw this daytime flare and shared in the excitement. The kids loved it! I handed the gentleman a copy of the Heaven's-Above info from which I got the times and encouraged him to check these things out for himself. "The International Space Station is going right over head this Saturday night at 7:30!", I told him. Then he said to the kids, "See, it's a good thing we did go on a walk after all!" Who knows, thanks to the persistent encouragement from the people on this list and the hard work of Chris Peat, we may have recruited another human that will find fascinating what seemingly shouldn't be fascinating but is! That is, the fun of accurately predicting and seeing reflections of light visiting us on regular occasions from earth's orbit and beyond! :~) Tom Iowa USA P.S. I wonder if any one has ever coordinated a cell phone communications relay in which one person then another let the other know when the flare of one iridium satellite has reached him. For instance, I could tell from the info collected at two sites input into Heavens-Above that a particular flare moved about 20 miles in 7 seconds! One person may say "Thar she blows!" then a few seconds later the other person many miles away could do the same. This could also work for the Space Station but at points in different states. Just a thought. Clear skies and bright reflections! ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Oct 06 2001 - 23:46:39 EDT