I want to reinforce Leigh Palmer's suggestion that you might want to
check out the satellite web site in Germany.
I have seen the "iridium flares" and they are great fun.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to accurately predict whether the
flare will be quite bright or not so bright. But it is possible to
predict where and when the flare will occur if it should be bright
enough to see. So you just have to go out and look at the right area
of sky at the right time, and if the iridium flare is bright enough,
you might be rewarded with a flash of something that is the "brightest
star" in the sky for about five seconds. Don't know what I'm talking
about? Go visit the site in Leigh's message (included below).
It is great fun to do this with students without telling them what is
going on. One time last spring I had a scheduled observing night with
my astronomy class. I checked out the satellite schedule and
discovered my location was supposed to have a fairly bright iridium
flare during our observation period. I memorized the altitude and
azimuth, and I set my digital wrist-watch alarm to go off 2 minutes
before the scheduled time. (I had also accurately set my watch within
a second to the correct time.) When the alarm went off, I told
students to begin looking at the sky in the appropriate direction. I
told them they might see something interesting and I was going to try
to tell them exactly when it would occur. You have to "cover" yourself
because I've looked at the right place at the right time and have not
seen anything. It seems to work about 70% of the time. So you can
make up some story about how hard this is to pull off, hence it might
not work... you know... the typical "magician dialogue."
Anyway, at the appropriate time I started a ten-second count down.
Exactly when we got to zero, we saw one of the brightest iridium
flares I've ever seen. I lucked out big time this particular night.
The students were, of course, highly impressed. I didn't explain it
for several days because I wanted to see if they could find out what it
was. I'm sad to report that none of them (a group of 12) figured it
out. I guess they weren't impressed enough to get on the Internet and
start searching for what might make a bright flash in the shy. But I
sure was impressed.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817
-----Original Message-----
From: Leigh Palmer [SMTP:palmer@SFU.CA]
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 1999 12:57 PM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Project Starshine
I've not seen Starshine, but there are many others, most of which
are more spectacular, that can be predicted usinf the German site: http://www.gsoc.dlr.de/satvis/ . You will be asked to locate your
observing position (they have many to choose from, or you may enter
your geographic coordinates if you know them) and you will create
a URL (they even have Burnaby, BC in their database) which can be
used from then onward with great ease if you bookmark it.
If you haven't done so you should check out Iridium flashes, They
are visually impressive, and they will pound home the point that
Newtonian physics is really terribly accurate.
I used to compute my own satellite ephemerides. I no longer do so
because this site is so good. This can also be done using "Starry
Night" software and downloading elements for a simulated display.