Bright event in Leo at 23:50 BST Friday April 10th

[Mel]

Hi

I just witnessed a bright star like object (for the life of me I thought I was looking at Altair).  In Leo, about 2 degrees North (towards Zenith) from gamma Leonis (Al Gieba).  The light was as far as I could tell completely static, bright orange maybe 0 magnitude and held it's brightness for about 10 seconds then gradually faded from visual range over about 5-6 seconds (which would be maybe mag 4.5-5 in my garden.

I checked for Iridium flares, none were listed.  I've taken some shots of galaxies in the region post event (NGC 3221, NGC 3193, NGC 3189, NGC 3185 and NGC 3227) but nothing appears to be out of the ordinary when comparing with stock survey images.

Would be interested to know if anyone else saw this, what with it being a nice clear night and the moon so low I am sure someone would be looking in this area at this time.  The only other thing I believe it may have been might be de-orbiting space debris but why was it not moving?

Cheers

Iain