Yes, it is possible to observe and photograph Iridium flares from the ISS. In fact it was done 8 years ago during Expedition 6. Rob Matson, creator of the Skymap program, came up with a version that corelated the Iridium reflection beams with the path of the ISS. Back then I was in email contact with Expedition 6 Science Officer Don Pettit. Rob asked me to see if Don would be interested in trying to see the flares. Well, Don Pettit has all the curiosity of a bright-eyed child in a toy store and he bit into that project with a vengence. Rob would send me the predictions along with a graphic showing the expected location and I would email them up to the station. It took a few tries and a little tweaking of the program, but after a while Don was seeing flares as predicted and bagged some of them with the Kodak digital camera they used on the station. One image even showed dual flares. After Don left the station, subsequent residents never expressed any interest in cont! inuing looking for Iridium flares, so we stopped sending the predictions. Pettit did the flare observations more as a "hobby" activity, and i was dissapointed when no mention was made of them in the book "Too Far From home" that related the activities of Expedition 6 whern Columbia was lost. Robert Reeves Looking at the nice photographs recently taken from the ISS of Earth and sky, I started wondering if also the Iridium Flares could be potentially photographed from the International Space Station. By adjusting my program I performed some 3D simulations and generated several predictions. I have uploaded the results of my analysis along with a few pictures and a 3D stereo video of simulated Iridium flares on the following page: http://digilander.libero.it/SATrack/Iridium_Flares_As_Seen_From_The_ISS.html It would be nice to see also a real photograph! Best Regards, Simone _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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