Iridium Satellites

Thanks Spec.

I'll sign up for one or the other, or maybe both!
There's lots of stuff I'd like to link..

Space

Ok guys, I was having so much fun capturing these, I did a couple more.
These are from Tonight 7-13-04.

If you notice, they followed nearly the same trajectory.
They were only about 5 minutes apart, at a Mag -4, not the brightest possible.
But they were an easy pair, didn't have to move the camera.!

Is there stilll interest in this? I mean, after you've seen a couple. LOL
The fun part is capturing the image anyway!
Enjoy.

Space out

Here is a -8, really bright...This one came out really nice.
Some clouds in the lower right, but I think they enhance the look of the pic.
Taken july 19th 04.

I opened an account on photobucket, I'll just post links from now on, if I take anymore of these..

enjoy

I thought Motorola trashed the iridium program because it was too expensive to maintain? It made national news a few years back that all those sats were to burn in. Did something change that saved the program?

Astrocreep,

Yep, I remember that as well. I was morbidly looking forward to some artificial
meteors LOL..
I'm pretty sure that the military kicked-in some money to keep them afloat.
Probably a good idea..They were already up there...so, why not..

Space

I say again, that is good stuff, SD! Still have zero luck with the weather, but if I ever do I will try to grab some low-light video of some flares.

You are correct about the military buy-out of Iridium. When they went kaput in 1999 the government saw a bargain and bought them out for under $100 million. If I was not incredbly lazy today I would dig up the news story, but it sounds like I would be preaching to the choir anyway.

Keep snappin' them pitchers!

Spectre,

You don't have to look far. The info is posted in the opening post to
this thread by Quadricle..

Originally posted by spacedoubt
Here is a -8, really bright...This one came out really nice.
Some clouds in the lower right, but I think they enhance the look of the pic.
Taken july 19th 04.

Hey SD,
awesome pix! that last one was beauty
thanks