IridiumFlares

Description

Screenshots

Comments (20 on the original page, latest shown)

• LunkwillJun 17, 2006
  As I understod each flare is only visible in a ~10km wide band on earth, so just selecting a major city might not be exact enough.
• kijangJun 20, 2006
  Nice! Love looking for flashes. What is the convention for E/W: East = negative West=positive? Or the other way around? Similarly: North=positive, South=negative? Or the other way around? There seems enough room for a list/table of the next 5 (or more) flashes. And pin the 'i' icon down!
• maels1Jun 20, 2006
  Really nice widget, rarelly used but nice, about the latitude and longitude you can use this site http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm it will tell the location of your ip( dont know if it is accurate, but im just trying to help)
• cortexbomberJun 21, 2006
  If you have google earth, you can get extremely accurate coords from that - and in the right format too
• ankitunlimitedJun 21, 2006
  can someone tell me what brightness is visible to naked eye
• cz_maJun 23, 2006
  Really nice! 5 stars!
• cz_maJun 23, 2006
  to ankitunlimited: actually I set the magnitude limit to zero for my city's condition. Human eyes can reach up to 6.5 under *ideal* conditions but it's obviously unrealistic for an Ir-flare observer
• stullexJun 29, 2006
  Hm, seems to ignore the minimum brightness setting. I've set it to -1 and it doesn't show me the flares displayed in heavens-above.com, only the very bright ones. It would be nice to have a _list_ of upcoming flares, not only the next one. Otherwise: good work.
• KatschungaJul 3, 2006
  There seems to be a bug with the time display. It's 23:52 at the moment I'm writing this. The widget shows the next flare at 23:16 so I thought I had the wrong time settings. I changed from GMT+2 to GMT+3 and the widget says 01:16 so I changed to GMT+1 and the widget is showing 23:16. GMT+0 and it shows 21:16. Very confusing. I reloaded the program and tried several times but it's always the same behavior.
• Shaolin12Jul 10, 2006
  Really nice widget this, love astronomy and this works well on my PC which is only a 700mhz Dell with 512mb SDRAM. Thanks for a really useful widget.
• MichaeldeeJul 11, 2006
  This is the most AWESOME widget I've downloaded thus far. Seriously. I check for Iridium flares all the time, and this is going to make it much easier. EDIT: Hmmm....I'm very familiar with Heavens-Above, and according to their site, there are quite a few flares in the next 24 hours....none of which match what this widget says is the next flare. The widget says Iridium 41 on July 12 @ 7:41am, Heavens-Above says Iridium 41 isn't due until July 15 at 10:00pm. How does the widget take into account N/S latitude and E/W longitude? I'm at 36.16N x 115.035W (Las Vegas NV). See if you can make the widget match Heavens-Above. Thanks for working on this!
• KimGarsdalMar 23, 2007
  This is exactly what I've been waiting for. I can´t wait so see whether it works tonight. By the way. To those of you are looking for your locacation's coordinates, Google Earth is also an alternative. Find your house, garden or other preferred viewing site on Google Earth, place the mouse pointer over it, and note the coordinates shown at the bottom of the screen.
• rooty2teaMay 24, 2007
  Nice widget. I have been using heaven's above for a few years now. Your times and azimuths never match heaven's above. Sometimes they are close but never the same. My location is the same for each to the 4 decimal place. And sometimes heaven's above has flares the you don't have a vice versa. Just wondering what the difference is.
• davidrs7Aug 11, 2007
  I just downloaded your widget and gee no way to set my location. What kind of a widget is this anyway??? I tried everything to reset the lat and long. to no avail. What gives? I think it stinks. David S.
• johnnysaucepnAug 20, 2007
  Sorry for any problems - I didn't write the original code for this widget, and am completely unqualified to check the trigonometry, I only did the conversion as a request, and am unlikely to ever update it.
• xydeanJan 12, 2008
  I just installed the widget and put in the coord's and it works fine. The times and altitude/azimuth were only off by a few secs and a degree compared to the Heaven-Above figures. There should be better instructions with this. When you're inputing your location, take the lat/lng of your location off Google Earth and type the degrees and minutes as decimals without converting. ex. 20d55'20.05"N, 70d10'25.26" would convert to 20.55 and 70.10. Altitude is also there too, just divide your altitude in feet by 3 to get metres.
• lolemsanhdieuJun 19, 2008
  Interesting as I just started to learn astronomy. Thanks
• acmetechAug 2, 2008
  No xydean, decimal coordinates mean 30 minutes = .5 degrees. Eg 65d45'17" rounds to 65.75 degrees (since 45 minutes is 3/4 of a degree). Also, degrees South or West are entered as negative degrees. For your example of 20d55'20"N, 70d10'25"W comes out to 20.922 latitude, -70.171 longitude.
• FemininJan 12, 2010
  interesting, great work and nice widget!
• amenajari-interiorJan 13, 2010
  good stuff!