Definitely, I saw the same thing... while at Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomy Society's monthly public star party in Allentown, PA , about 20 to 30 of us saw it, too... At first, I thought it was an airplane with its landing lights on, but it had a grainy sparkly contrail. So I though it was the beginning of a fireworks finale slowly rising rocket above the trees and it had a few companion rockets... but it just kept rising and rising very nearly past zenith and to the other side of the sky... it seemed to be breaking up as it went on, maybe 10 to 15 pieces - some moving ahead of the the others and some showing flare brightening for a few seconds. All in all it was exactly like videos that we all on TV on the space shuttle reentry disaster videos in Texas, only not as brilliant. The event would not be even noticed in the daylight. The brightest objects were about -2 or -3 magnitude. I wish I had a video camera to keep a record... it was so exciting. I looked at my watch when it was over... It was 10:54:45 EDT. The speed was a bit faster than most all satellites, starting in the WSW, getting to about 80 degrees (South) and dimmed quit a bit when it headed to the horizon at ESE. Terry Pundiak, Allentown, PA 40.5700N, 75.4480W On Jun 26, 2004, at 11:59 PM, Scottdalton4@aol.com wrote: > I may have just seen my first satellite re-entry or it was the most > incredible fireball I could imagine. I saw, at first, 3 objects > burning very bright and leaving long smoke trails behind them. They > started in the NW and were heading East. When I first saw them they > were about 20 degrees above the horizon. The objects broke up into > many smaller pieces, approximately a dozen, each with its own tail. I > watched the pieces until they burned out very close to Deneb. They > burned for about a 60 degree span. > This took place at 10:54 local time(02:54 UTC). My location is > 39.6731N 75.7239W . > At first I thought it may be a Bootid meteor but it was nowhere near > the radiant. If anyone could help identify this I would be grateful. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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