Hi Wayne, Sorry -- my last message somehow got sent before I finished... Let's try again: > The first is an old one..and I suspect only a few of you, if any will be > able to help me, if anyone can at all. This event occurred on 1998 Dec 14, > at 08:36:48 UT (03:36:48 EST). At that time I observed...THROUGH THE > CLOUDS...what I recorded as a -8 Magnitude meteor. ... > The position I recorded was Azimuth 271 Elevation 20, or RA 4h 8m, > Dec +13.7. My location is NJAA OBSERVATORY, HIGH BRIDGE, NJ USA > COORDINATES: 74d 53' 54" West 40d 40' 52" North ELEVATION: 830 feet > (253 Meters). Unless this was a satellite reentry, it was very likely a meteor. No Iridium satellites could have flared at that time and location, and I did a complete search of 8000+ objects and came up empty. Nothing sunlit was low enough and bright enough to get anywhere close to this bright, so that narrows it down to "self-luminous" bodies. > The second one is not a meteor related sighting, rather it's an UNID for > me. On July 5th 1999 at 22:18 EDT (02:18 July 6 UT) from the same > location, I was out checking sky conditions when I observed a bright > satellite (~+0.5) about 40 degrees elevation in the WSW moving from > NW to SW. This was a slow moving satellite, much slower than ISS or > MIR, hence it must be in a pretty high orbit, which is why the > brightness surprised me. The best match I can find is USA 32. Try the following TLE. The time is off by about 3 1/2 minutes, but of the candidates in the area it's the only one likely to be off by that much. USA 32 6.0 3.0 0.0 5.3 d 1 19460U 88078A 99178.12273000 .00000190 00000-0 71855-4 0 03 2 19460 84.9875 68.1797 0002000 271.4300 88.5698 14.31336948 06 --Rob