The Iridium Flares are very large subjects and therefore can be photographed with relative ease. Discover how to become an Iridium Flare hunter reading the “How To” section.
Check suggested Iridium Flares forecasts near your position, prepare tripod, camera & lense and get ready for the visible pass!
Push the camera shooter and Catch the Iridium! Once done upload your picture using the upload module and contribute to achieve this great mission!
Iridium Flare as visible to the naked eye (above) and as photographed using a reflex (bottom)
Since 1997 the Iridium SSC company has launched in orbit around the Earth a constellation composed of 66 telecommunications satellites (called “IRIDIUM“) that allowed the realization of what until then had not yet been possible: to reach by phone any corner of the world thanks to the use of a satellite device.
An interesting feature of this fleet of satellites is that, having being equipped with three antennas with large reflecting surfaces, in certain conditions they are able to divert to the Earth the sunlight that invests directly generating an unmistakable bright flare of a few seconds that can be seen by naked eye at night, even in the city with a large light pollution. This phenomenon is called “Iridium Flare“.
Read moreAfter more than 20 years of honourable service, Iridium Communication (born from the ashes of the previous company), has started the planned divestment of the first-generation fleet in parallel with the launch of new more modern second-generation satellites called “IRIDIUM NEXT” but unfortunatelly no flare is expected to be generated from those ones.
They remain therefore only a few months before that this phenomenon, which has accompanied the nights of many worldwide amateur astronomers in the last twenty years, becomes a mere memory. Before that happens, however, we would like to be able to take at least a picture of one “Iridium Flare” for each of the first-generation satellites still in use. This is the aim of the project!
Read HOW TO
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