My son and I ran out to see comet Ikeya-Zhang tonight. It was barely visible w/o binocs but really nice with my 7x35s. As a bonus to seeing the comet, my son Ben was looking high in the north at 7:32 PM CST when he spotted a very bright object. Rapidly thinking through all the possibilities of what it might be then seeing it fade he came to a conclusion and exclaimed, "I just saw a flare!" [At first I thought he was talking pyrotechnics.] He clarified his exclamation by telling me to look at the then faint iridium satellite. When I got home I looked up the coordinates of that exact country location using MapBlast and plugged them into Heavens-Above. That allowed me to see how bright it was. Indeed it had a magnitude of -8. He had spotted the brightest portion of a flare that we didn't know was going to occur. NUTS! I missed it! It is very rare to see one that bright by accident. Tom W. Iowa USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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