bright re-entering object seen last Saturday from Houston?

From: Joe Dellinger via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2021 00:20:49 -0500
At the George Observatory (about 50 miles SouthWest of Houston, Texas) last
Saturday night, at 01:21 April 25 UTC, we saw an extremely bright object
about 15 degrees high in the East, slowly moving down towards the horizon.
It had a distinct orange color and fragmented into at least 8 pieces which
at first appeared to separate, but then as the object continued lower and
lower, they appeared to re-converge. I'm pretty sure that was a large
re-entering object in an approximately West-to-East orbit re-entering
somewhere East of us.

Any idea what that was? I've seen no news reports... I would have expected
somewhere East of Houston it must have been utterly spectacular. And
further East it would have been against a darker sky; in Houston it was
still twilight, but that was no problem as this object was a significant
fraction of the brightness of the full moon that was also present in the
sky.

The alternative was that it was some sort of local firework.... but by the
way the fragments appeared to converge towards a vanishing point, I think
it must have been very far away and traveling away from us. And we heard no
bang etc.

Someone who was quick with her smart phone got a photo and a short movie,
but I'm not sure that would add much to my description. People at the
George all saw it because we all started yelling "look East, look East!".
We were setting up for a public observing night (with socially distanced
observing protocols in place).
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Received on Thu Apr 29 2021 - 00:22:08 UTC

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