I have posted a photo of Iridium 57 from tonight it was a stunning
flare, I think it may have been a little brighter than the -8
predicted. It was a long slow flare so I had to cut the exposure of a little early due to cloud. I observed a -0 flare last night and it seemed to flare for a long time, the duller ones seem to last longer than most of the bright ones for some reason.
As they rotate, their solar panels reflect the sunlight and produce an amazing bright flash. They can generally start ag around mag 1 but then gradually brighten up to mag -8, waaay brighter than even venus, and then they fade away again. It can be over in 10 seconds.
But they are spectacular when you see them.
Go to heavens-above.com, enter your lat/long and get a list of Iridium flares that will pass over your location in the next 10 days.
I went to the trouble of entering all my lat longs for my NZ trip..... to hopefully see or even image an iridium or ISS with some nice scenery they seem to have buckets of here - also have buckets of cloud!... I did get the binos out once in Greymouth - it was cool to see the southern cross so much higher in the sky (42.48deg S) - Got as far down as 46deg but clouded in....
I even treated myself to a handheld GPS unit before my trip.... I'm going to start sitting directly under iridiums soon....
