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Iridium flares are bright reflections of sunlight off flat panels on Iridium communications satellites. For a brief period, they can reach magnitude -8.5, around 1000 times brighter than the brightest star in the sky. They are akin to someone shining reflected sunlight off a watch face straight into your eyes - only this time the “watch face“ is a metre-wide flat metal panel about 500km above the surface of the Earth. There are many satellites in the Iridium Constellation, and ocasionally new satelli
