Imagine it's just after sunset. The sky is now dark, and stars are becoming visible. This is the prime time to witness an Iridium flare. You just have to know exactly where to be, exactly when to be there, and exactly where in the sky to look. If there are no clouds in the way, you can see an amazingly fast, very short-lived brilliant streak of light in the sky!

An Iridium flare is caused by sunlight being reflected from one of the three main mission antenna (MMA) of an Iridium communication satellite. The MMAs are flat, highly polished aluminum surfaces. When the sun, earth, observer and antenna angles are just right, the antenna can reflect the light of the sun just like a mirror. There are over 80 of these communications satellites in orbit, operated by the Iridium LLC Consortium and are used for satellite telephone communication.

Would you like to see a flare? If you have a GPS or a way to compute longitude and latitude, and a very accurate clock, you have everything you need to see an Iridium flare. Heavens-Above.com can give you all the orbital, location and timing data you need to get started.

Here's an :08 second video clip of an Iridium flare I captured on my Nikon Coolpix 990.