That is very late at night. Only satellites very high would be sunlit but only satellites very low can "hit" the atmosphere. So whatever it was emitted light due to heating and not by being sunlit. It still could be a satellite. It couldn't have been phobos-grunt as it wasn't very close to england at the time. But the description is amazingly close to Phobos-Grunt's next pass 20 minutes later. And objects in a lower orbit tend to show up sooner. But to be in the same orbit 20 minutes sooner the object would have had to disconnect from P-G recently. Nothing else is "on the list" right now: http://reentrynews.aero.org/upcoming.html But if it was as slow moving as the description sounds then it seems it had been orbiting earth just before entry (whether it was a rock or space junk). - George Roberts http://gr5.org -----Original Message----- From: Bruce MacDonald Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2012 6:08 AM To: seesat-L@satobs.org Subject: Decay seen from Chippenham, England Hello list, long time, no post! My friend Andy Burns in Chippenham, England (lat. 51.460° N, long. 2.122° W according to Heavens Above) has sent me this decay report for 20:55 UTC on Friday 13 January 2012: >Although not due to be seen tonight, at 8:55 something come in to the atmosphere and broke up in a shower of particles. Basic west to east transit. >Mag -2 at start, up to nine parts at end. Slightly faster than ISS, started 35degrees up in South West went all across Southern sky max altitude 60degrees when due South then began to >break up, into two, then 3 then nine. Leaving trail. >Could it have been reentry of Grunt??? >Did anyone else catch this. Did anyone on this list in NW Europe see a decay at around this time? This is a report from a credible witness (Andy is the chairman of the Wiltshire Astronomical Society). Thanks Bruce Devizes, England -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20120114/19fbab8c/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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