I took a short break from satellite observing tonight to check out the progress of Neptune and Uranus as they are slowly moving against the background stars. Soon after I pointed my binoculars at Uranus, at about 12/030430Z, I noticed a flash just below the planet. I thought, "Perhaps a geo flasher" (I didn't think about it at the time, but it was a little too low in declination for a geo). I watched for another flash and a few seconds later it happened again. I fumbled to put my watch into the stopwatch mode while I continued to view the area where I'd seen the flashes. After about five flashes it became evident that the satellite was not geosynchronous because it was moving too fast, yet much slower than a LEO. Later, using SkyMap, I discovered that I had seen: Intelsat 5-3 r 8.6 3.0 0.0 5.0 d 20.7 1 13007U 81119B 99284.26630217 .00018805 00000-0 14882-2 0 5993 2 13007 23.5685 304.8668 4228828 142.5656 256.2152 7.00339305351170 Unfortunately, I found out that I had not put my watch into the stopwatch mode, so I did not get accurate flash times. Because I thought I was timing it with my watch I didn't make any attempt to estimate while I was observing, but I'd guess that the flash period was about 10 seconds(?). The magnitude of each flash was between +5 to +6 when I first saw it, and the flashes slowly faded to near invisible in about 6 to 7 minutes. The flashes were quite sharp at first, and looked more like solar panels, not what I'd expect from a rocket booster. I haven't seen much on SeeSat about this Atlas Centaur, does anyone have any observational history on it? Ralph McConahy 34.8829N 117.0064W 670m ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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