I have a nifty little app called iFlare, and it reminds me of Iridium flares. Tonight I got the opportunity to see the -4 magnitude flare from Iridium 47!

With a waxing moon high in the south, it was a little hard to get good dark adaption. However, I was barely able to see +4 stars in the area (like the parallelogram of Lyra). The location for the maximum was a few degrees SE of Vega, and about 10 seconds before the maximum I caught the satellite N of Vega and headed toward the SE.

After the maximum, it was possible to follow the satellite for about 20 degrees, fading out before it got as far as Rasalhague. That 20 degrees was about 30 seconds or so, I think.