February 9th, 2007 19:23:33CST(UTC-6)

On February 7th I was made aware of an upcoming dual Iridium Flare with almost no delay between the two flares and both centerline's within a half mile of each other just East of my location in the Metro Minneapolis/St. Paul area via the Minnesota Astronomical Society. I had figured that the optimal spot between the center lines was along 93.1705W(Dec Deg NAD27), that the flare would occur at about 7:23:33PM give or take a second every 2 miles North or South using a combination of Orbitron and Heavens Above. I then began going up and down the line on a map looking for suitable foreground objects unable to select one. I plotted where the flares would occur in the sky using Cartes Du Ciel by creating a Star Chart with the location of the flare plotted with red finder circles that would enable me to 'frame' the shot. While you could easily use a compass and degrees above horizon, using the star's to frame your shot is like using graph paper to compose your shot. In this instance the flare occurred directly on the line of the two bright stars in Ursula Major('The Big Dipper') that point to Polaris(the 'North Star'). After an hour or two of planning over a couple days, I had still not found a suitable foreground object for the dual Iridium Flare. The temperature was around -1F with 5MPH winds that evening so I did not want to do any hiking. I finally selected my target at about 6PM that evening, The Church of St. Peter in Mendota Heights, MN. I left my house around 6:20PM, finding the Church at about 7:10PM. I took 10 minutes setting up the camera and shot this at around 7:23:31PM. The flares from Iridium 59 and 96 were expected to be in the -8 range (-7.9 and -8.4 between centerlines along 93.1705W) occurring nearly simultaneously which they did. At 7:27PM I looked up in the sky and started counting to 90, I first saw the flares like dim firefly's, hit the shutter release, the flares grew to incredible intensity, then back to firefly's before disappearing under the Urban Light Polluted sky's 14 seconds later.

Church of St. Peter, Mendota Heights, MN @ 44.8863°N, 93.1678°W (NAD27)



Canon 350D, 800ASA, 14 seconds, 33mm/f4, RAW processed in Photoshop and Noise Reduction.

Reduced to 50% original size & Cropped

March 3rd, Partial Lunar Eclipse