05-24-2017, 03:05 AM
Tonight at 7:47 PM we should be able to see a very bright Iridium flare, as bright or even brighter than the most recent we watched last week, depending on your exact location. In lower HPP it should be slightly brighter at -8.2 mag.
Following a roughly north to south path across the sky, the flare will occur just before it approaches Jupiter.
From TomK:
24th May: Very bright Iridium flare at 19:47:29. This should be easy to spot. It's going to happen almost exactly halfway between Jupiter and Arcturus (see my post above about locating both objects)*.
Sky track: https://goo.gl/QqJ0yC
* From TomK's post 5/15: If you locate Jupiter (fairly high up if you look in the south) and then look eastwards, you'll see a bright star. This is Arcturus (Hokule'a in Hawaiian). The satellite will pass just east of Arcturus before the flare which will occur to the east of Jupiter.
It's predicted magnitude is -7.6 which is roughly 130 times brighter than Jupiter, so ought to be very bright!
Following a roughly north to south path across the sky, the flare will occur just before it approaches Jupiter.
From TomK:
24th May: Very bright Iridium flare at 19:47:29. This should be easy to spot. It's going to happen almost exactly halfway between Jupiter and Arcturus (see my post above about locating both objects)*.
Sky track: https://goo.gl/QqJ0yC
* From TomK's post 5/15: If you locate Jupiter (fairly high up if you look in the south) and then look eastwards, you'll see a bright star. This is Arcturus (Hokule'a in Hawaiian). The satellite will pass just east of Arcturus before the flare which will occur to the east of Jupiter.
It's predicted magnitude is -7.6 which is roughly 130 times brighter than Jupiter, so ought to be very bright!
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