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re: (meteorobs) Iridium Flares - Important note to meteor ob...
Two other thoughts that popped into my head...There are other satellites
that do flare...on my last observing session, there was one that is about
mag +7, which flashed to between mag +3 and 0 every 12 secodnds or so... so
it was a series of widely space flashes. Any one of which could have been
a recorded as a point meteor, since the duration of the flashes was 2/10
second at the most, had I not kept looking in the area and seen another
flash 10 degrees away 12 seconds later. Rather fortuitous, methinks! And
because the non- flashing magnitude was below +7, it would not have been
listed in most visible satellite sources.
2nd, Alan Pickup suggested a while back that binoculars can be used to
search for a satellite that may have caused a flare, since most are in the
binocular range between flashes. However, during a meteor watch this can
cause sustantial dead time...reaching for the binoculars, getting them
trained on that spot in the sky, then trying to find a +7 dot moving in an
unknown direction....sounds ugly to me.
WayneAgayne
Actually, there was a third point (<g>) I wanted to make, but I dropped it
on the floor and can't find it, so maybe later)