51–60 of 68 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
trying to envision said parties
Rooftop parties in the city, drinking beer from bottles, strings of vintage lightbulbs, people wearing plaid, taking out your phone to say “Hey look at this!” and pointing out a spot in the sky where an iridium flare streaks across while everyone gasps “Wwwooww!!” High fives
Does the tracker actually model the directed reflections or just the relative angle of the viewer, the satellite and the sun and let chance take care of the rest?
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Really cool. My dad used to make me go around to teachers before a big meteor shower with documentation as to why this year's shower was "gonna be the big one" and me being out of school the next day should be an excused abcense. That translates to at least ten summers of one night a year under the stars during a shower. Your story reminded me of a time when what must have been a school bus of space dust burned acros…
I wonder if it was the 1998 Leonids. I got about 25 people from my college dorm to drive to the beach that night. It was the night of the fireballs. Another great memory.
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You should seek out a flare if you can, it's much much brighter than seeing a satellite or the ISS, as impressive as those are.
Hmm, so an Iridium satellite is much brighter than a satellite or the ISS (a satellite). Got it!
The Iridium satellites are not very bright most of the time - you would be lucky to see one with the naked eye. But when they flare, they can be the brightest thing in the night sky for a few seconds.
Is there a heat dissipation reason why satellites are painted white instead of black? And if so, why are they white instead of a completely reflective surface?
An interesting fact is why the name Iridium? When they were in the planning stages for this set of satellites, they estimated that they would need 77 of them to completely cover the Earth (including the poles), evoking an image of 77 electrons circling the nucleus of an atom. The atomic number for the element Iridium is 77. The number of satellites needed was paired down to 66, so the satellites should actually be na…
Is there a heat dissipation reason why satellites are painted white instead of black? And if so, why are they white instead of a completely reflective surface?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_blanket
An interesting fact is why the name Iridium? When they were in the planning stages for this set of satellites, they estimated that they would need 77 of them to completely cover the Earth (including the poles), evoking an image of 77 electrons circling the nucleus of an atom. The atomic number for the element Iridium is 77. The number of satellites needed was paired down to 66, so the satellites should actually be na…
pared down
An interesting fact is why the name Iridium? When they were in the planning stages for this set of satellites, they estimated that they would need 77 of them to completely cover the Earth (including the poles), evoking an image of 77 electrons circling the nucleus of an atom. The atomic number for the element Iridium is 77. The number of satellites needed was paired down to 66, so the satellites should actually be na…
https://mobile.twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/99610389859420...