Mike Hicks

So Close and Yet So Far

I stood out in the cold, but fortunately above-zero, weather last night to catch two simultaneous Iridium flares. Iridium flares by themselves are pretty common, but it looks fairly unusual that there'd be two of them they'd have this brightness (magnitude -8), be positioned so close together in the sky, and reach maximum intensity at exactly the same second. Most double-flares that people catch occur within larger windows of time.

Here are two versions of my photo, darkened to different levels (I had the aperture too wide):