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The site also will tell you how bright the flare should appear (in magnitudes), and where to go to see that particular flare at its very brightest (traveling just a few kilometers can make a big difference in the flare’s brightness). Each listing will tell you where in the sky to look - and when! - to see sunlight glint off an Iridium spacecraft's antenna panel. A few mouse clicks should produce a list of any Iridium flares occurring over your location in the next several days. This fascinating Web site is maintained by Chris Peat, a physicist and space-industry veteran who now works for the German Space Operations Center. Most would-be Iridium flare watchers need go no further than Heavens Above.
IRIDIUM FLARE SOFTWARE
What's more, these flares are predictable, thanks to the satellites' publicly available orbital elements and to software and Web sites that satellite-watching aficionados have made available free of charge. In skywatching circles, the Iridium satellites stand apart because their flat, shiny, door-size antenna arrays (three per spacecraft) periodically reflect sunlight toward the ground, causing brief (seconds-long) but brilliant flares that can momentarily reach an apparent magnitude of –8 - outshining the planet Venus.
IRIDIUM FLARE MOVIE
For more information and higher-resolution movie files, visit Tom's Corner on the Software Bisque Web site. It was captured in real time using a Paramount ME robotic telescope mount, a 5-inch astrograph, and an ultrasensitive video camera. On the morning of August 8, 2006, an Iridium flare over Golden, Colorado, reached magnitude –3.4. Department of Defense and Federal Emergency Management Agency are among the principal customers of the satellites' current corporate owner, Iridium Satellite LLC of Leesburg, Virginia. However, Iridium LLC never obtained the millions of customers needed to make the project profitable.
IRIDIUM FLARE PORTABLE
The spacecraft (and the ground stations supporting them) were intended to enable owners of special portable telephones to communicate from any point on the surface of the globe. In financial circles, the Iridium "constellation" of satellites stands apart because it was built at a cost of roughly $5 billion, only to be sold for $25 million when its first corporate owner, Iridium LLC, went bankrupt in 1999. Known as an iridium flare, the glare from these satellites is well known to many astronomers. Of the roughly 3,000 spacecraft in Earth orbit, nearly 100 stand apart: the Iridium communications spacecraft, which skim the uppermost, most rarefied region of the atmosphere (the exosphere) at altitudes around 800 kilometers in six steeply inclined orbital planes (orbits that nearly pass overhead at the North and South Poles). EST on February 1, 1998, as Sky & Telescope senior editor Dennis di Cicco waited with his camera, taking a 10-minute exposure on Fujichrome 100 slide film through an 80-mm f/2.8 Hasselblad lens working at f/4. If you've ever wondered what a nearby supernova might look like, treat yourself to one of these.Iridium satellite number 35 lit up the predawn sky west of Boston at 5 a.m. It's not natural to see a starlike object glow so brilliantly.
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"I've been lucky enough to witness a few –8 passes and can only describe the experience as alarming. "A really bright one can take your breath away," wrote Bob King, who is also a writer here on Universe Today. Normally these machines drift along like a faint star, but when the sunlight catches the side just right, out comes the flash. "Tilt your head or your screen!?"Īccording to a July Sky & Telescope article, the constellation includes 66 satellites-down from the planned 77-and is named after element 77 in the periodic table. The third sequence on the video might look a little odd, but Legault said he rotated the camera 90°. In video you can see the real speed of the event." "But last summer I filmed three of them in the Big Dipper and Orion, and they were so bright a pond reflected the flare.
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"Usually they are photographed in long exposures," Legault told Universe Today via email. And now astrophotographer Thierry Legualt has caught them in action on a video. Because most of these satellites are still under control by their parent company, their flare timings are easy to predict.