Dysprosium flares

If you suffer from Wikipedia disease, don't click on the links in this post. You have been warned.

I've just learned about the existence of Iridium flares two days ago, so I wanted to see one. The large, flat, shiny antennas of the Iridium satellites reflect the light from the Sun and project moving spots of light about ten kilometers across on the surface of the Earth, a lot like a giant inside-out disco ball. If you happen to look at the right part of the sky when such a spot of light passes over you, you will see the light reflected off the satellite. If you are close to the center of the spot, the flare will be bright enough to be seen even in daylight. There are 66 active Iridium satellites and a few spares in orbit, so the flares happen several times a week. The name of the Iridium satellite constellation comes from the element Iridium, which has the atomic number 77, same as the number of satellites called for by the original plan. To cut costs, the designers later reduced the number of satellites to 66, but the name of the system remained the same (Dysprosium didn't have quite the same ring to it, although someone inserted the word "penis" in the middle of its Wikipedia article -- I removed it).

There was a flare visible from here yesterday night, but I missed it by about two seconds. Apparently, it takes me significantly more than a minute to get from the apartment to the front door of the building. Damn those slow vertical people carriers. The next flare will be Tuesday morning, and I won't have to go out for that one, because the apartment I'm in has a balcony facing the right way. I'll try to take a picture too.

Another thing that I learned today: the xkcd comics have witty tooltips! So I went through all 254 of them again and read the tooltips. Rarely does one get the chance to enjoy something all over again, but this was one of those occasions. The pleasure was slightly marred by the fact that Firefox truncates the longer tooltips, so I had to look at the image properties and scroll the title field to read the long ones. I wonder if there is anything special in store for the round number edition due next Wednesday (comic number 0x100).

In other news, my domain transferred successfully away from RegisterFly. Lypha insists that I pay their invoice, weeks after I told them to cancel my account. Stay away from both.