Scintillating Sunday! It was a special Sunday evening for a few lucky Punekars who showed up in time to have a spectacular celestial shine bestowed upon them... It was a predicted Iridium flare of maximum possible brightness (-8.0) which is a special phenomenon (but not very rare). With a waxing gibbous moon and all the bright city lights giving enough trouble, a clear sky helped us relax a bit. A routine hubbub over spotting the known stars in twilight and drawing the predicted Iridium path on the celestial slate, triggered the excitement of other people too (who prefer hanging out on the Z-bridge for different reasons usually ;) ). As the time approached 1900 HRS, a dim speck was spotted southward of Aries and it certainly appeared to follow its destined route. Brightening up slowly as expected, it attracted the attention of many-a-pair of eyes. By the time it reached the vicinity of Andromeda Galaxy, it was so spectacularly bright that we all cheered with joy! And guess what! Iridium-6 was being chased by Iridium-51 and we enjoyed a very rare double flare! About Iridium flares: (link in comments) Double flare details: (pic in comments) Photographs and video: Uploaded by Atharva Pathak in another post
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 07:21:38 +0000
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