11/21/2005: Iridium flare

[Undertoad]

This was the Earth Sci Pic of the Day recently, but I have it in a different crop. Anyway, what if you looked up at the sky one evening and saw this? It would freak you completely balls out, would it not?

And yet there's a simple explanation. These are flares from two different Iridium satellites. Quoth the EpoD,

Iridium flares are brief but often bright reflections of sunlight off of low-Earth satellites. The Iridium satellites span a world-wide mobile phone network. Originally it was intended that a fleet of 77 satellites would encircle the globe -- 77 is the atomic number of the iridium. The idea being that if the Earth is the nucleus and the satellites are the electrons, the entire system would take on the appearance of an iridium atom. The reflected sunlight from one of these satellites' main antennas or solar panels can attain a magnitude of -9. This is approximately as bright as the half illuminated Moon and nearly 100 times brighter than Venus when it's at its brightest!