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Sadly, with these new Iridium satellites, the 'Iridium Flare' phenomenon of a bright flash visible in the sky when the old satellites passed through sunlight an
by grkvlt 10y ago
Sadly, with these new Iridium satellites, the 'Iridium Flare' phenomenon of a bright flash visible in the sky when the old satellites passed through sunlight and reflected it downwards when overhead, will no longer occur. I liked the quote from the Iridium CEO explaining why it won't happen: "[...] we weren't going to spend money just to make angular shiny things on our satellites [...]"
- hazeii 10y agoThat's news to me, and a real disappointment. Just before Christmas I saw there was going to be a mag -8 flare close to where the ISS would be- watched it with my 4yo, spinning a tale the ISS was Santa and the flare was a reindeer re-entry. The flare predictor[1] on the Heavens Above website will presumably shut down when the last of the old satellites goes. [1] http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx