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Iridium flare tonight.


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Want to see a satellite flash right in front of your eyes? Look west 25degs above horizon at 10:43 and 50sec tonight! Its an iridium flare and its a rare but brilliant sight!

 

What you will see is an intense burst of light, brighter than any star in the sky from a sattelite, as it spins, you will see the flash as sunlight reflects off it's solar panel array.

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http://www.heavens-above.com/iridium.asp?Dur=7&lat=53.36121&lng=-1.48453&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET

 

For the next 7 days. Plenty of bright ones! The brightest are daylight visible!

 

Its a new subject to me, I`d never heared of them until recently and this could be my first sighting... clouds permitting! Thanks for the link, that`ll come in handy!

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I'm sure "there's an app for that", but if you can't be arsed with stupid phone software, just set yourself a reminder on the phone for one of the daylight iridium flares with a magnitude of say -6 or greater (bigger minus number of magnitude the brighter it is - see http://www.heavens-above.com/iridiumdayhelp.asp).

 

Make sure you set the alarm about 60 seconds before the flare, and then when the alarm goes off you can check the direction and elevation, and then point up in the sky and shout "UFO!" and point in the rough direction of the flare - if all goes well (not all these predictions are accurate) then your spellbound audience should see an inexplicable bright flash in the sky.

 

I don't often pull it off, but it's worked a couple of times and it's a corker.

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