Coordinates of observation: 36.381801, -83.983054 Location: North of Lafollette, Tennessee Object traveling: South to North, towards Big Dipper Rate of flash: 7-8 seconds Altitude: 30 degrees at max (estimate) Time of observation: 11:05 - 11:07 PM Eastern (0304-0307Z) July 7, 2007 (July 8 zulu) Earlier this evening I was visiting my mother-in-law and went out to do some off-the-cuff observing. Her location is away from light pollution (save the street light at the top of the hill where she lives) and is prime in observing dim objects. I saw 10 polar orbiting sats tonight, two crossing one another going opposite directions. I have no info on any of these, as I was just casually observing, plus I had no info or material to reference. In between the rockets red glare from a massive fireworks show near Deerfield, I caught sats and meteors. A couple of "skimmers" and a couple of "zippers" to add to the enjoyment. I got the family out to watch after seeing 4 sats and meteors, and I credit my daughter with seeing the mystery object. It was to our west, going north. She said "I see one" and we all turned to look and saw nothing. She swore she saw it and we thought maybe it was a lightning bug (firefly for those outside the sticks :) ) and just as we were about to look away it came back and really flashed bright. A very bright magnitude similar to Jupiter just to the south. It went dark again and I counted "one one-thousand, two one-thousand" and it flashed again from nothing to bright at 7 seconds. It would start to become visible, and then flash, then dim. It did this 4 times that we saw. It faded out just below the big dipper as it traveled north. I checked H-A for possibilities, but the three that appear, 2 go LOS at 11:04 and one goes AOS at 11:06 going N-S. The closest I have is Meteor-1-4 Rocket but this flash so bright it had to be solar panels reflecting, as in a real bird, and it's listed as being to the East going north, when this object we saw was to our West going North. Any help is appreciated. -- Greg Williams K4HSM k4hsm@knology.net http://www.twiar.org http://www.etskywarn.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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