This morning I was set up and ready to observe the newest Iridiums at culmination (57 degrees elevation, azimuth 275) when I was distracted by a very bright slow moving object in the southwest predawn. Luckily I had my low light level video system set up, but by the time I swung it over to the position the flare had faded out (about 6-8 seconds). Then I saw another -4 magnitude flaring object in the same area and trained the video on it, then another new object joined in!, then as those two faded, another new -4 magnitude flaring object! Four of the 5 Iridiums were observed to flare to between -3 and -4 for roughly the same length of time. While I have not reviewed the tape, I hope I had enough sense to press the record button. The positions of the flare activity of 24907, 24906, 24905 and 24904 (I think 24903 was exempt from the super flare) was in the area of elevation 49 degrees, azimth 230, phase angle of 39 degrees as computed by QUICKSAT. Times of predicted passes in that area ranged from 11:02:16 to 11:03:47 UT. One remarkable thing is that two of the objects were -3 at the same time as they passed through this tight little region of the sky. It was very impressive. As the objects approached culmination they had dimmed to around +5.5 magnitude which is more typical of an anti sun reflection. Tomorrow morning there is another pass in the same region 3 minutes earlier. Paul D. Maley DO5/Cargo Operations NASA Johnson Space Center Houston TX 77058 USA phone: 281-244-0208 fax: 281-244-7622 email: paul.d.maley1@jsc.nasa.gov latitude 29.5378 north; longitude 95.0868 west; altitude 6 m