Have you witnessed a dazzling Iridium flare in the night sky?

[turbo]

Buhl Observatory (light pollution is heavy but i manage ;) )

That must be a fun job, even though Pittsburgh is a bit heavy on haze and light pollution. I attended the University of Maine at Orono starting in 1970, and loved visiting the school's observatory on nights when students were welcome. The observatory was TINY and had a old long-focal length 8" Clark refractor and some mostly primitive accessories, but it was always fun to look at Jupiter, Saturn etc. Of course, the light pollution in a heavily-lit college (safety first!) kills the deep-sky performance of even a great old 'scope like that. I have an old 6" f:8 Astro Physics that is "just" small enough to be portable to dark-sky sites (and Maine has LOTS of them).

Once, I told my observing buddy that I wanted to try to visually locate Leo I (very faint!) and he warned me off, saying it was too faint for a 6" of any design. I star-hopped to the field, and using averted vision and scanning techniques, managed to detect a brightening. I sketched it in relation to the faint field stars that didn't appear in my charts and showed him the sketch in my notebook. He studied the sketch and went back to the eyepiece, but coudn't see Leo I. I popped the OM-1 on for a short exposure and moved on to less demanding objects. I had the film developed the next day and it matched my sketch perfectly. This is an object that is supposed to be really demanding in MUCH larger scopes, but northern Maine's remoteness and dark skies combined with the high contrast of Roland's wonderful short-focus refractors works wonders.

The latitude here (45N) combined with the dark skies means that the most often cause of light pollution on clear nights is aurorae. Contrary to popular conception, it's not periodic bright shimmering curtains or transient spears of light - it's a frequently-experienced diffuse sky-glow that reduces contrast enough to make difficult observations impossible.

 

[whydoyouwanttoknow]

I've had the chance to observe Omega Centauri through a, 24inch I believe it was. I was awe inspiring. Also saw many other objects but of course, for me that is the one that stood out in my memory the most.

I haven't gotten my scope out much in the last few years, but when I did (it's a 4inch Newtonian made by royal) I use to find all the globulas I could. Most just looked like little smudges but for some reason that's enough for me.

 

[Janitor]

Sorry that this doesn't quite address the question that was asked, but-

I used to go to a website that listed Iridium flares. The Iridiums were commsats which had big solar panels with a shiny film on them. Somebody computed when this or that place on Earth would be in the line of reflection of sunlight off the panels of a satellite, with easy visibility to the naked eye. I went out at night on about eight occasions, and I think on only one such occasion did I miss the flare, probably because I went outside a minute too late or was looking in the wrong part of the sky. The "flares" were much brighter than the reflection of sunlight off of any other kind of satellite I have seen, but they only last a few seconds, so you probably won't see one if you are not specifically looking for it.