Commentary on the evdidence for Echelon

[Neil Clifford]

 [perhaps getting a little off topic now?]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 01:37:45AM -0800, Paul Leyland wrote:

> Thank you.  Your comments only make my case stronger.  If the normal
> brightness is 10 magnitudes or more fainter than a flare, then a flare from

most of them are typically in the mag +11 to +14 range with occasional
flares/glints up to mag +2 to 0.

> 0.2km reflector would cast obvious shadows at night and would also be easily
> visible in broad daylight.   It's possible, I suppose, that some UFO
> sightings could be explained by this mechanism but I rather doubt it myself.

mag -8 flares such as you get from iridiums are easily visible in
daylight; I've seen several myself. They could probably cast shadows but
I've not been looking in that direction at the time. The most common
misidentification is with meteors especially those whose angle of
trajectory would place them close to 'heads on' to the observer, ISTR.

regards,

-- 
Neil Clifford * Oxford Starlink Computer Manager * clifford@astro.ox.ac.uk