This page is intended to guide you through how to locate your position in the world and using the Heavens Above website determine when and where you can see a specific satellite in the night sky and also how to photograph that event. You can learn more about Iridium flares here.

What you will need:

• A GPS receiver (optional).
• A camera with manual mode, ISO 800 or higher, and a fast lens. I shoot at f/2 but f/2.8 with boosted ISO and/or longer exposure times should work.
• A tripod.
• A device capable of measuring degrees. I use a plastic protractor that I found in my room. But you can print a paper one from this site and use it if you want.
• A magnetic compass (optional).
• A flashlight.
• A watch or other time keeping device (iPod, whatever).
• A image editing app like Adobe Photoshop, Jasc PaintShop Pro, or even Apple Aperture. (optional)

(Note: while this guide covers the use of a digital camera, the same can obviously be done with a film camera.)

Step 1: Finding your Location.

Look for a location with relatively level ground, easy access and as full a view of the sky as possible. Once you've found a good spot you need to figure out its exact coordinates. For our purposes exact is within one kilometer of accuracy. One way to do this is to use a GPS receiver, but as I said above it is optional, if you can find where you are with Google Maps/Local you and determine suitable coordinates from that.

Using a GPS:

Turn your GPS on, let it do its business and find enough satellites to get good accuracy. Then just mark your viewing site as a waypoint and make a note of that waypoint for when you enter your location on Heavens Above.

Using Google Maps/Local:

Go to http://maps.google.com/ enter the nearest address or manually zoom into your viewing area so that the viewing area is in the center of your map then click on 'Link to this page' in the upper-right of the page. Here's what it looked like when I did it:

As you can see in the screenshot the selection in the address bar are the coordinates of that location. It looks like this:

http://maps.google.com/?ll=48.540534,-122.917957&spn=0.005867,0.012746

The highlighted part are the coordinates for the center of the Google map view in decimal format separated by a comma. So my coordinates are: 48.540534° North Latitude and -122.917957° East Longitude.

On to Step 2: Using Heavens-Above.com