Thursday 26 April 2007

Another METOP-A flare, hazy skies and timings again

The skies have turned hazy since yesterday. With the moon and the urban environment, this means serious tracking is very difficult.

I observed another flare of METOP-A (06-044A) yesterday (25 Apr) at 20:08:42 UTC. I watched this pass because the track and time were very close to that of the flare observation of the 20th.

Indeed, it flared at virtually the same spot, in the tail of the Big Dipper. Due to the conditions the brightness was difficult to estimate: certainly mag. 0, possibly -1. With the naked eye I could barely make out the dipper stars itself, but the flare was easily visible.

There are still some strange things going on with my timings. I have chosen to target as many non-classifieds as possible to get some insight into the timing consistency.

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