Possible re-entry sighting in January 1985?

From: Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 03 2000 - 00:16:34 PST

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    There's a report, "Lights in the Sky", at this location:
    
     http://www.attrill.freeserve.co.uk/lights.htm
    
    that sounds quite a bit like a possible re-entry event.  It 
    occurred over the Bahamas at about 9:48 p.m. local time on 
    January 10, 1985 (about 2:48 Jan 11 UTC, I believe).  On 
    January 11, 1985, six objects are cataloged as having 
    re-entered, three of them listed as "Salyut 7 Deb": 15281, 
    15307, and 15312 (82-033 pieces DM, DW, and DY).  The others 
    were Cosmos 1611 (15403, 84-119A), Molniya 1-63 SL-6 R/B(1) 
    (15430, 84-124B), and Cosmos 1613 Deb (15461, 84-121K).
    
    I looked up Salyut 7 and found that it was in service long
    after this date, so I don't know what those debris might 
    have been.  Maybe they were something like the Mir debris 
    trash bags?
    
    Anyway, I don't know if it would be possible now to 
    determine if any of the known re-entries might correspond 
    with what was seen in the Bahamas that night.  I noticed 
    one apparent contradiction regarding the direction of
    motion of the objects and have sent an enquiry about that.
    
    The story also mentions the very unusual multiple fireball
    event in 1913 that's sometimes called the "Cyrillids".
    
    *****
    
    Here's a definite re-entry item.  I just found a report 
    about the January 1997 re-entry of the MSX Delta in a US 
    Air Force online document.  This article names names and 
    has some very interesting details.  It's titled "The night 
    the sky fell in Texas" and was published in May 1997:
    
    http://www.afmc.wpafb.af.mil/organizations/HQ-AFMC/PA/leading_edge/may97/tex
    assky.htm
    
    (No doubt that long URL will be broken into two lines.)
    
    For those cloudy nights, here are a few orbital debris 
    sites that I forgot about or just came across:
    
     http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/ (same as next)
     http://sn-callisto.jsc.nasa.gov/ (same as previous)
    
     http://www-ccar.colorado.edu/research/debris/html/ccar_debris.html
    
     http://www.aero.org/cords/
     http://www.aero.org/cords/links.html (good links!)
    
    Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
    
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