Hi All, Chuck Hards and I saw it at SPOC on Wensday the 13th at 11:10 PM no flare up noticed. When did the electrical system blow? Is the ISS done for?
Erik Patrick wrote:
Same thing happened tonight as seen from here near SPOC except the momentary brightening was even more dramatic, brightening for a few seconds to nearly as bright as Venus. I wonder if the phenomena is somehow related to the newly installed solar arrays. I've seen several shuttle/station passes over the years but I've never seen "irridium-flare-like" brightenings like these.
I also saw one of these bright flare-ups, nearly the brightness of Venus, during last night's 11:30 pm local time overpass. It's a hot topic on the www.spaceweather.com . The June 14 www.spaceweather.com features an imaging sequence of an ISS overpass on June 11, including this amazing photograph:
http://spaceweather.com/swpod2007/14jun06/Storey1.jpg
IMHO, the shuttle seems to be the reflecting surface, not the panels.
Storey's image was taken with a 6 inch f/8.
I've been mulling about how to take such a sequence. I am thinking that the best passes are those like last night - where the appearing and ending altitude do not change much - like 6/14 11:30pm - or where the appearing and disappearing azimuth do not change much - like 6/14 00:42.
Then you would only have to track on one axis.
- Kurt
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