Flash Iridium or Meteors?

[entropia]

How can you tell the difference between them? I was looking at the night sky on Saturday when I saw two streak of lights (maybe 30 minutes apart, one to the West and the other to the South)

[ronin]

An iridium flare will actually grow in brightness over a few seconds, maintain that peak then decay away, also you can see the satellite that was the cause, both before and after.

Meteors tend to be shorter in duration, grow in brightness then are gone, so a sudden end.

An iridium flare will cross the sky, a meteor plunges into it. The tragectory is different.

Usually pretty easy to tell the 2 apart.

[entropia]

Thank you, Ronin. I thought what I saw where iridium flares but it seems they were meteorites. I have seen a meteorite shower years ago but I didn't know about the iridium flares until recently iso I thought they might look similar.

[Peter Drew]

Iridium "flares" are also accurately predictable, see spaceweather.com for timings.