A Flare of the Iridium Type

Another iridium flare. This one happens to have been caused by the satellite Iridium 60. It was launched March 30th 1998 from Vandenberg AFB in California aboard a Delta II rocket along with four of its iridium buddies.

Like all the Iridium satellites this one is a communications satellite for satellite phones. It is in a polar orbit going from pole to pole and back in about 100 minutes. It is in orbit almost 800 km above the earth.

I don't have much else to say about this picture. I took it on saturday night from Mt Tolmie. It was a 30 second exposure.

A Bright Pre-Easter Surprise

An elusive iridium flare. Nearly as elusive as posts to my blog have become!

This one was a kinda wimpy one as flares go, only reaching a brightness of -2 or so, about the same as the brightest planet in the sky right now, Venus.

It was good natured enough to take place right near the big dipper as you can see. It also avoided the nearly full and very bright moon which was lighting up the clouds.

I took this at the astronomy open house from the roof of the Bob Wright Building at UVic. Since the satellite takes about 45 seconds to go from invisible to peak brightness and back to invisible, and it is moving across the sky very quickly it is very hard to take a picture of a flare and time it right so you get the whole thing in the exposure.

If you look closely you can see that I bumped the camera a little as I was taking my hand from the shutter. It gave the left bit a little bit of a wobble.

I have some new photos to share, and after my exam tonight I may go out and capture some more if it stays clear. I hope to be back on track with posting now.

Iridium 37, Flare Near the Dipper

Finally! An Iridium Flare! I took this shot last night at just after 7 pm. You can see the big dipper in the picture, and if you follow the two stars at the end of the bucket you can see Polaris near the edge of the photo. The flare itself is the bright thing in the middle. 

I got to where I was going to shoot it about 10 minutes early and set up the camera. I knew that it was going to be 40 degrees in altitude about 25 degrees east of north. Having it so close to Polaris made it easy.

I did a few test photos to make sure everything was all lined up correctly. Then sat in the car to wait. The flare was to peak at about 10 seconds before 7:17, so I went back out at about 14 minutes after according to my cell.

My cell phone clock is about 2 minutes fast, and I know that, but when it hit 7:16 I saw a satellite coming from the right direction about to pass just out of the frame to the left. I almost moved the camera, and if I had I would have missed the real one. 

I saw the satellite around zenith, straight overhead. When came into where I knew the frame was I pressed the shutter button. I knew that if I just used a 30 second exposure it would get cut in half again, so I used a bulb exposure. The exposure ended up being just a tad under 70 seconds.

I quite like the result, and I think it is pretty cool how precisely these flare can be predicted. Anyways, that was my yesterday night.

Our Friend Orion

Orion

The great Orion appearing over the Salish Sea. The streak across the picture is from an airplane. I went out to try and take a picture of an Iridium flare. There is a constellation of about 80 satellites called Iridium. They have  extremely reflective antennae, and when the sunshines at a certain angle on them the get really really bright for a few seconds. At Heavens Above in the links section on the right, there are predictions for when and where they will happen. I set up my camera to get this one, but I had my aim off by about 45 degrees. I saw it happen, but alas, I did not catch it. They are really cool so I am going to keep trying.