Are the Iridium satellites still up there?

[drmorbius]

No use asking me... I wouldn't know!

I was up at 4am this morning for another attempt to view a -8 flare. There were quite a few stars and one big cloud. You guessed it... I missed the flare... again! :mad2: .

This is the 4th big (-7/8) flare in a row I've missed due to the :tasdevil: weather. Oh well, there's a -7 coming up next week...

[OneOfOne]

I was up at Beaudesert at the weekend and there were a few good ones...but I didn't bother. The sky is clearer back in Melbourne! There appeared to be a lot of smoke around, and it was pretty cloudy both nights.

[Gargoyle_Steve]

I saw that one listed Randall, I was awake until 1am this morning and I considered setting the alarm to get up and view that -8 mag event. The flare centre was 600m due west of me here, ie just a tad further up Beerburrum Street, near the park I guess. Luckily I figured the clouds looked horrible and left the alarm off.

Did you notice around 2 weeks ago there was a dual flare event predicted for us here? From memory -6 and -4 mags, only 20 seconds and 2 degrees apart in the SSW sky ... I watched, there was a tiny bit of thinly spread cloud near that area .. yep, you guessed it, neither flare was visible!

Bugger!!!

[snowyskiesau]

I was beginning to think that iridium flares were a hoax!
I used heavens-above and found there should be a -8 (iridium76) directly over my place at 04:23 this morning and there was. Pretty amazing even with a full moon.

I use Starry Night Pro and have assumed that it's satellite tracking would be accurate. Looking just now shows no iridum being visible from my location at the time I saw one.

[Dennis]

Have you updated your comet, asteroid and satellite files from the SNP website recently? I think that the orbits of satellites are constantly being updated and its best to use the latest orbital elements.

Cheers

Dennis

[Lee]

Starry Night always seems pretty spot on for Iridiums in my experience.... As Dennis said you do need to keep it updated though....

[drmorbius]

Yep... that was miss number one and two! Oh well, at least I only had to go outside once to miss both of them :P .

[Lee]

I have always found Heavens Above to be very accurate, as long as you have the exact time and good lat-long - you can't help those clouds though!