What did I see?

[rob7]

Did about 7 hours observing last night from about 6.15pm-3-15am. Using my 12" dob I saw a few things for the first time such as M31 and m15. They were great especially M15, but the best was early on in the session. At about 7.10pm I just happened to train my Dob on a bright 'star' which I had just noticed over some house rooftops towards the east. I was greeted my an amazingly bright orange satelite shape flashing across my wide angle eyepiece. There was a fair amount of detail, but I couldn't digest it all in the short time I first came across it. Looked back up in the sky and the object was ripping across the sky towards the west, bright as anything I'd seen in the sky other than the sun and moon. [ when I first saw the object I momentarily thought it was an 'ET' ]! Tried following it through the eyepiece again and managed to get fleeting glimpses of it before it dissappeared. Would I be right in thinking that I was watching the International Space Station being lit up by the sun which had dissappeared below my horizon? It looked too big compared to all the other 'normal' satelites that cross my sky in the dark.- Whatever is was awesome and I'm glad I got my 'freestyle' Dob out..

[Astroman]

Dobs are great for satellite "tracking".

You can check www.heavens-above.com, enter your location, and see if it was ISS. Plus, you can get predictions of future fly-overs. Check out the Iridium Flare section, too. These are communications satellites with highly mirrored antenae that reflect a narrow path of sunshine to Earth. These flares can be 10 times brighter than Venus!

Happy hunting!