Did anyone see a bright red satelite flare (approx -3 to -6Mag) in south-south-western skies approx 30Deg Alt. ?

[zakky2k]

Hi All,

Sorry if this is not the correct thread for this topic, wasn’t sure where post.

Just went out to check the weather for tonight and saw a very bright, deep red object.

Instinctively I thought it was satellite, and maybe the thin cloud cover in that part of the sky was making it appear red.

However its magnitude increased until it was by far the brightest object in the sky (the full moon veiled still in clouds further to the south-east).

I observed for a full minute at least and its magnitude appeared constant, and the object was stationary (Geo-stationary satellite?).

I called my wife to have a look but by the time she came out about a minute later it had started to dim rapidly and by the time her eyes had adjusted it had all but disappeared.

This was observed from 49deg North latitude around 20:30 - 20:33 UTC (22:30-22:33 CET).

I've checked on TheSkyX but couldn’t see any satellites around that time, and the fact it was stationary and appeared such a deep red made me wonder if anyone else had seen it and would be able to identify it?

All the best,

Zak

[Eigen]

Strange, I was not looking up at the sky tonight. However, I was just having a couple beers with a friend with whom I saw the exact thing you describe several years ago, tonight we were in the exact place where it happened and it actually came up in the conversation.

At 46N it was also in the SW. It was very bright as you say, in my case it was pretty low about 10 degrees of the horizon max, does this mirror your observation? It stayed stationary then suddenly started to dim and it was gone, it did seem to move "jump" as it was disappearing. We observed it for a good couple of minutes.

I would also be quite interested in finding out what it was.

[alan potts]

Sounds interesting.

A;lan.

[m12_shakes]

Is it possible to rewind time on Stellarium? If so, you could check if anything comes up on that.

[Hypernova]

I remember seeing something similar to what you described way back at the end of 2009, just about when I was getting into amateur astronomy.

This was in November of that year and the object appeared as a very bright light, brighter than any star in the sky, roughly due west and 45 degrees up in the constellation Cygnus. It just stayed in that vicinity for a couple of minutes before very slowly fading. It moved probably no more than a degree or two in that time and I still can't think of what object it could've been.