Bright flare from failed Starlink satellite

From: C. Bassa via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2021 23:18:28 +0200
An all sky camera in Germany caught an extremely bright flare last night.
https://twitter.com/Locastan_modder/status/1400090402888294404

This flare has been linked to Starlink 1129 [45046/20006C]. This
Starlink satellite appears to have failed in mid-September 2020, as
the SpaceTrack orbital elements show a transition from regular changes
in orbital parameters to the smooth variations caused by decay in the
atmosphere. For the 9 months since, the orbital altitude has decreased
from the operation 549 km to 545 km.

It would be interesting to observe more flares from failed Starlink
satellites and determine the maximum brightness a flare can attain.

Jonathan McDowell maintains a list of the status and statistics of
Starlink satellites at
https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html. He lists a
total of 26 Starlink satellites as failed with decaying orbits. It may
be that these satellites can produce similarly bright flares.

Regards,
     Cees
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Received on Wed Jun 02 2021 - 16:19:27 UTC

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