Iridium Flare

What's an Iridium flare and why is it so exciting? I hear you ask.

The white line you see in the picture is an Iridium flare.

But what's an Iridium flare and why is it so exciting? you ask again.

Well, up in the sky (about 700 kilometres up) are a number of satellites that form the Iridium network. These satellites are used for telephone communications and there are about ninety-two of them up there circling the globe.

An Iridium flare happens only at certain times of the day, or night, when the sun is reflecting off one of its three antennae. This one passed overhead at about 7:20 this evening and was followed very closely by another, less bright one about thirty seconds later.

Still not excited?

Well this thing is only about the size of a desk and it's over 700 kilometres away... and you can see it.

So how did you manage to photograph it? you ask.

I used a program called Orbitron that I got from here. It's cardware, which means if you like it, Sebastian Stoff, its writer asks that you send him a postcard to let him know where in the world it's being used.

Orbitron will tell you exactly where in the sky to look for, not only Iridium flares but also, the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope and various other satellites. I've even used it to tell me what time sunset would be at Hokitika in New Zealand, so my wife and I could go and watch it set over the ocean back in May.

Still not excited? That's okay, neither was my nineteen year old stepdaughter (Home and Away was on).

I was excited just by the fact that I actually managed to photograph it. Maybe next time I'll focus the camera a bit better though.

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Those frog's eggs I rescued from the goldfish the other day are now swimming around their container. They'll be going back into the pond in a day or two, now that they can at least escape from the fish, something the other eggs didn't manage to do unfortunately.

Some would say I should have just left them in the pond and let nature take its course. If they were native fish in the pond I'd agree, but goldfish will even eat their own eggs and they certainly aren't natives. I just thought I'd just even up the odds for a few of them, that's all.

I'll post a few more pics of them in a couple of days.