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Re: Blue Salt Crystals = Green Fireball????



Steve wrote:
>I was just talking with Jack Murphy at the Denver Museum of Natural 
History,
>and he was saying that there has been an unusually high amount of 
fireballs
>seen in the past year or so...

I think at least some of these 'fireballs' are really 'Iridium flares' 
which are sunlight glints off an Iridium communication satellite.
This web page : http://www2.gsoc.dlr.de/ is amazing and easily the best 
source of information about these flares.
This is a dynamic Web page, you input your lat./long. and time zone and 
it generates predictions of visible satellite passes.

A -7 mag. Iridium flare is likely to be confused with a fireball even by 
someone who knows a satellite from a hole in the ground.

R.



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