Iridium flare

[Kenny]

I captured the Iridium flare from Iridium 41 communications satellite at 21:48 this evening from Orpington. Canon 450D DSLR, 45 seconds at 33mm, f/6.3, ISO-1600. First time I've caught one, very pleased with the result. Stacked in DSS with 1 dark frame to remove rogue pixels.

[MarkH]

That's excellent Kenny, the longest I've witnessed  one for is less than a second.

[Mike]

Stacked with what Kenny? Surely the flare would only be on one frame?

[Kenny]

Yes. That's right. But adding a dark frame removes dodgy pixels.

[RobertM]

Stacking involves more than one frame so I think you meant you calibrated the light frame in DSS ?

[Mike]

Stacking involves more than one frame so I think you meant you calibrated the light frame in DSS ?

Yeah that's what confused me.

[Kenny]

Thanks. I'm sure you are right. Still learning the lingo.

[Kenny]

Another one.

Iridium 18 'flare' caught at 21.33 this evening from Orpington in the dusk sky peaking at magnitude -8.1!! Other than a mild curve change in Adobe Photoshop CS2 to reduce the sky brightness and cropping the image, this is how it came out the camera. Unlike the last flare I captured, I haven't RGB balanced this one as it made the sky look too black /grey. Canon 450D at 33mm, f/6.3, ISO-1600. Longer 1 minute exposure to capture the full trail of the Iridium Communications Satellite.

[MarkS]

Beautifully captured!  There's just no stopping you, is there!

Mark

[RachelC]

Wow. That is a great image!

[Carole]

Excellent capture Kenny.

Carole