I just observed Mir near itīs apex point from my site here in Stade near Hamburg/Germany, reaching a maximum elevation of 58 degrees over the Southern horizon in local twilight conditions, UTC 15:58. The exciting thing about this observation is, that Mir flared up to what I estimate to be at least mag -5 (!) or even a bit brighter high in the SSW, in any case considerably brighter than Venus as it is at its brightest, for a couple of seconds, before going down to a "normal" mag -0.5 again (at highest elevation in the S). Never have I seen something spectacular like this with Mir over all the past years. Although it was not completely dark, I could follow Mir for another 2+ minutes, and did not notice any other brightness variations, so it still seems to be in quite a stable orientation mode, and what I saw probably was a "centerline" specular reflection from the solar panels due to a very lucky constellation of the angles involved. What a cool sight! Just wanted to let you know, though it is another "I saw Mir" report, sorry for that - but this time something special... Alex -- =================================================== Alexander Seidel My location on planet Earth Dankersstrasse 22 N 53.5932 E 9.4683 6m asl D-21680 Stade --------------------------- Germany Phone/Fax (+49) 4141 68772 =================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html