Dear all, maybe someone can help me in identifying what this could have been: Location of observation: Mannheim, Germany +49.5055 -8.4712 Time of observation: Saturday August 29 2009, 20:30 local time (18:30 UTC; according to my wife ± 10 minutes because it was already too dark to read her watch precisely). (A limiting factor to my observational capabilities might have been the fact that I was on a music festival, had already drunk two beer and was talking to some people) Looking straight up, approximately at the zenith, there was a bright white star-like spot that did not scintillate and was clearly in the negative magnitude range. It didn't appear as bright as Jupiter did that night (-2.8 mag) against a black sky but against the civil twilight sky it appeared maybe half that bright. I could observe the object for several minutes (2 to 5) and during that time I could not notice any movement (I did not have visible references like a roof or other stars in close vicinity to that object) or change of brightness. Finally I looked up again and the object was gone. I checked the sky periodically for 5 to 10 minutes after that but it did not appear again. If it was a satellite it must have been at very high altitude. Around the time of my observation Navestar 25 (1992-019A) was close to the zenith. Is it possible that a Navestar satellite can cause such a bright flare? Do these satellites flare at all? Christian ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Aug 31 2009 - 20:19:57 UTC