![]() ![]() When I'm just in the dark side but an Iridium satellite happens to fly approximately above me, if everything is in a specific angle, the sun from behind the horizon hits the satellite's solar panels, and like a mirror, reflects those rays to the dark side, into a viewer's eyes. I live in the North so in the summer, the sun only barely goes below the horizon and the summer nights are short. There's a bunch of satellites known as Iridium, which happen to have a design that includes large, reflective solar panels. ![]() There's a lot of man-made space junk orbiting the Earth, some satellites still operated, some not. This time I got very lucky though, because one of the 12 satellites unexpectedly was something called an Iridium flare and I had never seen one of those in real life before. Last summer I went for a night bike ride for 6 hours and during this time, I spotted 12 satellites just by observing. They look exactly like stars, but they glide across the sky smoothly.Īirplanes may have multiple light sources, some blinking lights, and you can definitely perceive how low it seems to be: An airplane somewhat seems to come from the horizon and disappear the same way, while a satellite "seems to always be at the same distance from you", like gliding on an imaginary half-sphere or dome of a night sky covering you. ![]()
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